The first point worth making is that the recordings are very informative, being closely balanced, spatially vivid and with clearly defined violin desks to the left and right of the rostrum. Tedi Papavrami has a richly yielding tone, an overtly expressive playing style and the ability to dart in and around Emmanuel Krivine’s animated accompaniment. And although the sound is very up-front, the balance with Papavrami is excellent; at 2'37" into the first movement, for example, where there’s so much pulsing activity worth hearing behind the solo line, not to mention the shifting string lines soon afterwards and the fierce brass blasts after those. Full tutti passages are very exciting (eg at 4'27") and the tempo is kept very much on the move – no dawdling except where Bartók cues a change of pace. The well-judged recording reports things very much as they are in the score (crystal-clear pizzicatos from around 6'59" into the second movement). The mirror-imaging finale is full of drama, the coda mysterious, just as it is in the finale of the Concerto for Orchestra, another compelling performance.

Here the various instances of quasi-fugal writing come off particularly well, specifically in the outer movements; the Intermezzo is very rudely ‘interrupted’ (the lifelike sound helps) and the ‘Game of Pairs’ is both relaxed and playful. Only in the ‘Elegia’ did I miss the very special Hungarian stresses that Boulez brings to the viola line on his Chicago recording, even more so than Kocsis or Fischer in Budapest. Those would I suppose be my first digital choices overall: both are marginally more polished than this otherwise excellent Luxembourg Philharmonic Production, with Kelemen and Kocsis just about taking the lead in the Violin Concerto. But those who fancy a CD with these two masterpieces coupled together need not hold back. Both performances are compelling, and the sound keeps every detail worth hearing securely within earshot.