Concept albums have become the new normal for today’s violin stars and at first glance ‘Recuerdos’ looks like an example of opportunistic programming. In fact, Augustin Hadelich has reappraised all the music here, not least the apparently less consequential 19th-century fare bookending two statements from the 1930s.

Fifty years ago Itzhak Perlman’s first pitch-perfect account of the Carmen Fantasy was received as an essentially frivolous footnote to a two-disc Paganini project (Warner, 6/72). Hadelich, on the other hand, has contributed fingering and bowing to Henle’s recent Urtext edition of the violin-and-piano score: the longer playing time here reflects the restoration of traditional cuts and a more detailed responsiveness. Ruggiero Ricci’s solo violin arrangement of Recuerdos de la Alhambra, aping the ‘tremolo’ guitar-writing of Tárrega’s original, is usually rendered as a quick-fire stunt. Again Hadelich thinks unconventionally, finding elegiac overtones in the gaps between phrases rather than merely demonstrating the perfection of his jumping ‘ricochet’ bow technique (though he certainly does that). Heard after the Britten Concerto, the music becomes, as Hadelich suggests, ‘a poignant meditation on loss. One does not need ever to have seen the Alhambra castle, or to be a scholar of the Spanish Civil War to understand this – one needs only to be human and sensitive to the suffering surrounding us in this world.’

Prokofiev’s G minor Violin Concerto is placed second, after Sarasate’s take on Bizet. Once considered an escapist piece, modern interpreters have found more to it, its vaguely Spanish finale no longer a celebration of local colour so much as a portent of horrors to come. Often such re-evaluation entails uglification. Not so with Hadelich, whose generally unhurried conception embraces both lyricism and tensile strength to evoke a wider range of emotion. For Alex Ross, encountering Hadelich’s playing in an earlier context, it was ‘as if a Golden Age violinist had jumped out of the grooves of a 78rpm record’. As ever Hadelich is his own man. His slow movement, no less high-octane than Jascha Heifetz on shellac, is more than 25 per cent broader overall. The glorious depth of tone produced by Hadelich’s ‘Leduc’ del Gesù violin (an instrument once played by Henryk Szeryng) deters expressivity of the floatier kind but David Oistrakh would definitely have approved.

It’s impossible to hear the Britten as other than encoding the loftiest aspirations and today’s young violinists are no longer daunted by its melange of scalic material, technical jiggery-pokery and un-British anguish. Even Hadelich’s ability to offer tonal sweetness in the highest register is taxed by the composer’s high-wire act, but he toughens up his sonority to project the score with a searing intensity that boosts its claim to be considered one of the masterpieces of the last century. As elsewhere the WDR sound team gives the violin a tangible upfront presence, heightening immediacy with some audible breathing. At the same time, while significant orchestral detail is adequately lit, the balance sometimes gives the impression of an overly reticent band helmed by a conductor anxious not to get in the way. This is still a remarkable achievement. The artistic personality of the soloist feels a size ‘bigger’ than that of rival fiddlers and, as with previous releases, he supplies his own discerning accompanying notes.