Some of the very best recordings of Elgar’s Violin Concerto take me back in my imagination to the Queen’s Hall on November 10, 1910, when Elgar conducted Fritz Kreisler in a now legendary world premiere. This newcomer is one of these. I do so in order to conjure for myself a sense of fresh discovery and to try and follow Elgar’s unfolding journey as if for the first time, and Vilde Frang’s performance is a genuine exploration right from her delayed entrance – an unexpected and magical effect which captivated that first audience and captivates again here.

That solo entry is delayed because of the old-fashioned ‘double’ exposition, which Elgar deploys as in the Violin Concertos of Beethoven and Brahms, staples of Kreisler’s repertoire. The audience in 1910 might then, quite naturally, have expected the movement to pause dramatically towards its conclusion for an interpolated cadenza as in those works – but it does not and instead runs precipitately to a close. This structural surprise poses a question in itself, suggesting that something vital to the argument remains unsaid. Only when the ‘rondo’ finale seems about to run to its own exhilarating conclusion does Elgar, without warning, turn an unexpected corner: a chill wind blows into the garden as the sun goes behind a cloud and the music returns heartbreakingly to the first movement itself – the extended ‘accompanied’ cadenza is suddenly upon us and the whole work turns irrevocably on its axis. We are now so familiar with this remarkable moment that it can seem all too expected and ‘interpreted’, but it should in fact still shock and haunt the listener and sound as if actually improvised. It does so here to uncanny and devastating effect.

When I first heard Vilde Frang perform the Elgar live in Cardiff with the CBSO early in 2023 I felt that here, already, was an interpretation ripe for recording. A year later she did so, at Berlin’s glorious Jesus-Christus-Kirche, with Robin Ticciati and his Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in perfectly balanced sound. Her tone is beautifully focused and projected and the recording captures this very naturally – Frang can certainly dominate the orchestra if needed but, unlike many, she never forces her bow unnaturally. She is in complete technical command but never draws attention to mere virtuosity for its own sake: her understanding of Elgar’s kaleidoscopic writing is innate and instinctive at all levels and she conveys the different functions of rhetoric and rhapsody, and all else in between, as if from within the violinist-composer’s mind. It is here that she scores over so many of her predecessors on record in giving the full expressive gamut of a truly symphonic score: from the tiniest whisper to the boldest declamation, every nuance emerges with total conviction.

As with the great Second Symphony of 1911, the Violin Concerto also represents, in Elgar’s words, ‘the passionate pilgrimage of the soul’ and all involved in these Berlin sessions identify completely with this overwhelming emotional journey in a spirit of spontaneity and electricity. That sense of the partnership involved is quite remarkable, and Ticciati ensures that Frang is able to converse and form a genuine dialogue with her colleagues at every stage and creates a perfect integration between them. I have, for instance, rarely heard such sensitive pianissimo playing from orchestral strings as here when they support the soloist in confessional intimacy. Such intimacy also colours her delicious encores – an idiomatic transcription of Elgar’s lovely orchestral miniature Carissima (1913) for violin and piano and the welcome refreshing of Lloyd Webber Snr’s atmospheric flute-and-piano piece The Gardens at Eastwell (1982) for violin and strings.

Earlier this year I listened to all available recordings of the Violin Concerto for a Gramophone Collection (2/24). The young Yehudi Menuhin notwithstanding, it is still a matter of great regret that Kreisler wasn’t ultimately persuaded to record the work with the composer at the helm: there would undoubtedly have been a very special frisson just in hearing his unique tone, which was, after all, in Elgar’s ear as he wrote it. Interpretations have since varied widely but I had no hesitation in putting James Ehnes with the late Andrew Davis at the top of the modern pile. The greatest compliment I can pay Frang and Ticciati is to say that I would now find it very difficult to separate these two: Ehnes, captured live in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, has an intuitive mastery and effortless control but at times Frang has even deeper insight and a wider frame of reference. She is also given a warmer, more open recording. Every lover of Elgar’s masterpiece should try to hear this magnificent addition to the library.