The Schumann doesn’t get played nearly enough – and, as he reveals in the booklet notes, it couldn’t be closer to the Dutch violinist Niek Baar’s heart. Why is it not more widely programmed? I think the answer lies in the nature of the piece, the feeling that for the most part it feels like an orchestral poem with violin obbligato. The soloist is very much integral to the orchestral fabric and from the very start of the introduction – a surging declamation – the tone is darkly imperative.

Put simply, the piece comes across as a deeply melancholic stream of consciousness in which the solo part – and perhaps this is what appeals so profoundly to Baar – has the quality of an extended improvisation where the line and all its intricate embellishments are constantly evolving. Quieter introspective moments bring fleeting duets with solo woodwind and then comes the slow movement – again all too fleeting – whose introspection is drawn in one of the most beautiful orations in the repertoire. Baar’s kinship with it is self-evident.

The Bruch – one of the classical repertoire’s greatest hits – is another world entirely, one in which the tunes are writ large and so familiar as to be ‘in the air’ for all of us. And then there’s the motif in the slow movement positively willing Strauss to borrow it for the summit of his Alpine Symphony. Baar’s dark searching tone, so well suited to the Schumann, here really reaches for the light. Then again, come the finale, those gorgeous descents into the chest register sound second nature for him. The Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under Christoph Poppen offer a warm and robust sound into which Baar can both bed down and be borne aloft in the Schumann. He’s a great ambassador for it.