Like so many musicians trapped in the midst of the Covid pandemic, the young South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim has been more than ever gripped by the need to communicate through her playing. ‘I’m not a loud person’, she writes in the context of her sensitive booklet note. ‘I usually don’t talk much in everyday life, but that’s why I love playing the violin, because I can speak through the music, and communicate with people in the music.’ Laudable sentiments; but when the chips are down this recital, which has its good points (Kim is undoubtedly a talented player), has to level against rivals past and present, and to be quite honest Kim’s playing is far from even.

In the opening selection, Wieniawski’s Polonaise de concert, for example, Bomsori has to face the dash and exuberance of Perlman (and of course Heifetz before him) and she doesn’t match up. It’s a clean, silvery sound, true, but if you don’t bring a wealth of swaggering bravura to this music, it simply fails to dance. Similarly for the quarter-hour Fantaisie brillante on Themes from Gounod’s ‘Faust’, where all you have to do is turn to Bronisław Gimpel (part of an all-Wieniawski CD on Polskie Nagrania, also online) to gain a realistic perspective. No contest, believe me. Gimpel is wonderful, Bomsori merely good, though she picks up again for Wieniawski’s lyrical Légende. The Waxman Carmen Fantasy is much better, especially Carmen’s own arias, where Bomsori nails the character, while the Thaïs and Gluck Orfeo perennials are also nicely played.

So that’s the good news, as far as it goes. The really bad news comes in the guise of two crassly distracting transcriptions, the majestic Pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, which is quite bereft of grandeur (a swig of Mravinsky is much needed afterwards to help you recover), and ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ from Saint-Saëns’s opera Samson et Dalila, both straying from the music’s heart, though Saint-Saëns’s more virtuoso Introduction et Rondo capriccioso more than passes muster. The NFM Wrocław Philharmonic under Giancarlo Guerrero do a decent job accompanying and the sound is reasonable, too, but for her next DG venture – and I sincerely hope there will be a next venture – I would respectfully suggest that Bomsori Kim tackle, say, the First Sonatas of Fauré and Saint-Saëns, music where quiet speaking is entirely appropriate.