There are significant parallels between the violin sonatas of Bloch and Bartók, not least their uncompromising musical language. All four works date from the early 1920s, Bloch’s First preceding Bartók’s by a year, whereas his Second Sonata was composed some two years after Bartók’s Second. My guess is there was some sort of reciprocal influence at play: indeed we know (from Alexander Knapp’s excellent notes) that Bartók performed Bloch’s First Sonata in recital and the angular, aggressive language of its outer movements has a very Bartókian thrust.

The symbiotic musical partnership of Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez take that aggression as a starting point, but they also achieve a more inward communion for the work’s central Molto quieto. The Second Sonata follows Bartók’s Second in trading outward aggression for inward agitation and an earthy spirituality, folk-like in Bartók’s case (whose slow-fast pattern recalls Liszt’s and Bartók’s own Hungarian Rhapsodies), with Bloch more attuned to the world of prayer.

Bloch saw his Second Sonata as a fervid, idealistic counterbalance to the primordial onrush of his First, and the ecstatic harmonies that dominate the Second Sonata’s solo line have a profoundly prayerful effect. Shaham again scales the heights with mostly true intonation, a warm tone and meaty double-stops, though as soon as the first notes have sounded the searing benchmark of Jascha Heifetz inevitably invades the memory, more so than in the First Sonata, where the tender-hearted Louis Kaufman merits a special mention. That said, in both sonatas Shaham enjoys a more equal partnership with his pianists than Heifetz did.

The makeweights for this particular programme work well in context, Nuit exotique having a more eastern feel than the relatively modest Mélodie. Abodah (‘God’s Worship’), written for the child Yehudi Menuhin, outshines both, and Menuhin’s heart-rending 78, made during his early maturity in 1939, rather outshines Shaham’s, though to be fair it’s probably Menuhin’s most perfect single recording – quite an act to follow.

With fine engineering, realistically balanced, and excellent annotation, this is a digital front-runner, not forgetting the admirable Lionel Friedman whose sound and overall approach are on balance less distinctive than Shaham’s.