Laurent Korcia is a pretty considerable fiddler. He plays a 1719 Stradivarius with great aplomb and succulent timbre, and he is truthfully, if too forwardly recorded. He immediately creates the atmosphere of a French café scene with Grappelli’s soupy film theme, Les Valseuses, and continues with a series of alternating super-brilliant or alluring encores. The arrange- ments of the pair of Brahms Hungarian Dances, complete with cymbalom, turn them into total café music, but there is no denying the élan or the passionate virtusosity of the playing.

On the other hand, Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera and the Albéniz Tango are silkily seductive, not least because of the delectable piano partnership afforded by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, and they throw off he Tchaikovsky Valse-scherzo and Falla Danza española with great dash and not a little subtlety. Astor Piazzola’s Histoire de Tango is similarly persuasive, partly because of the intimacy of Christian Rivet’s guitar backing. The recital ends with a catchy popular mélodie, La Villette, enticingly ‘chantée par Julie Depardieu’, with an instrumental accompaniment that even includes a tuba!. You can surely now guess whether you are going to enjoy this recital or not! The film director, Bertrand Blier, tells us in the accompanying note that after he had played it ceaselessly in the middle of the night, his next-door neighbour came by next morning and insisted on borrowing the CD forthwith.