Two fascinating releases, both of which utterly confound expectations. The high point, for me, is the slow movement of the Brahms Concerto, where The Knights under Eric Jacobsen draw a slim but warmly present bass line and, beyond a fine oboe solo (Gustav Highstein), Gil Shaham starts to spin the sweetest narrative. This romantic sensibility is telling but never overstated, just as in the outer movements Shaham and his accomplices opt for a balletic approach to music that often treads heavily in hobnail boots. I wouldn’t always want to hear it like this but as a refresher course in a much-loved perennial it will do very nicely.

When it comes to the Beethoven, this new version from New York appears at the same time as a most unusual rival from Sinfonia Varsovia under Jean-Jacques Kantorow featuring the Bulgarian violinist Liya Petrova, who first came to our attention when she took First Prize at the 2016 Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark. Her approach to the Beethoven is very flexible, her tone warm and yielding, with oodles of colour and the technical facility to do more or less what she wants. Of the two, Shaham is the more conservative player, which brings me to the ‘surprise’ element when making comparisons between the two.

Performances of Beethoven’s Concerto tend to fall into two camps, romantic and leisurely (both Nigel Kennedy with Klaus Tennstedt and Anne-Sophie Mutter with Herbert von Karajan offer a first movement that clocks in at around 26'30") or – as is more often the case nowadays – swift, attenuated and outgoing (Christian Tetzlaff under Robin Ticciati runs to just 22'45"), most commonly with Beethoven’s cadenzas as arranged from his own piano version of the concerto. Here we have Gil Shaham arriving light as air at 21'22", using Fritz Kreisler’s miraculous cadenza (as do Kennedy and Mutter), and in doing so offering us the best of both worlds, lending Beethoven’s masterpiece both warmth and vitality. By contrast, it’s Petrova and Kantorow who stretch to 26'03" – but the rub there is that they employ the Beethoven cadenza. The expected combination of fast pacing and a scholarly choice of cadenza is reversed, whereas with Shaham and Jacobsen you can enjoy Kreisler’s cadenza without having to endure an excessively slow route in reaching it. Interesting, eh?

Then there’s Petrova’s choice of coupling, Mozart’s ‘Seventh’ Violin Concerto, thought to have been completed in 1777 and first performed in 1907 in Dresden. Although the jury is still out regarding its authenticity (I’m one of the doubters, I’m afraid to say), various violinists have recorded it including Grumiaux, Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Ferras, Szeryng and David Garrett. Petrova and Kantorow turn in a stylish performance much abetted by Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s cadenzas, the one for the slow movement played pizzicato throughout (the movement opens to a pizzicato accompaniment). It clinches a novel deal, one that combines imaginative interpretation with some relatively unusual repertoire, whereas Shaham takes two great concertos for a workout. Both deliver but of the two Beethovens I’d opt for Shaham.