It’s no surprise to learn that Ning Feng was the winner of the 2006 International Paganini Competition in Genoa; he’s able to bring the great virtuoso’s most extreme flights of fancy to life with exceptional beauty and precision. The left-hand pizzicati are uncommonly clear, even and rhythmic, and the notorious double harmonics are not only pure in tuning and tone quality, but sensitively and expressively phrased, too. Performed with this degree of finesse, Paganini’s music takes on a surreal quality – a dreamlike extension of more normal ranges of expression. Feng is not quite ideal as a Paganini interpreter, perhaps – like many players today he finds it necessary to linger in order to be expressive. And his polished account of Nel cor più non mi sento doesn’t quite have the daredevil thrust of Leila Josefowicz’s 1995 recording (Philips, 2/97 – nla).

Nevertheless, it’s an enthralling, exciting recital. Listeners, however, should be warned: we don’t always get to say “hello” to Mr Paganini, because Fritz Kreisler, arranger of five of the items and a most unreliable musicologist, gets in the way. I can appreciate Kreisler’s clever accompaniment to the 24th Caprice, but not the way he cuts and reorders the piece, adding his own variations and giving it a sentimental aura. “La campanella” is another travesty; Kreisler leaves out one episode entirely – a difficult passage where many violinists fail to shine, but for Ning Feng it would hold few terrors. Let’s have some more Paganini, Mr Feng, but give us the genuine article!