‘Should we regard this CD as a symbolic celebration of your marriage?’ asks the interviewer. No, says Previn, suggesting that his recent Violin Concerto fills that role. Yet this collection of songs and dances, starting with Previn’s Tango Song and Dance is as near as anything could be to a direct expression of love. Mutter is inspired to play with uninhibited freedom of expression, both with her new husband (in the Gershwin as well as his own piece), and with Lambert Orkis.

If the Fauré Sonata doesn’t seem to fit with the programme, Mutter in the interview emphasises the composer’s claims as a master song-writer. She might have added that dance plays its part, too – not only in the fast movements but even more in the haunting second movement Andante with its hints of tango rhythm, made the more seductive through Mutter’s magical half-tones.

Previn’s Tango Song and Dance sets the pattern. Written in 1997 for a planned recital tour by Mutter, it was left on the shelf when the tour was cancelled. It now takes pride of place not just on this disc but in Mutter’s recital tour in May to 20 European venues. The outer movements bring fireworks in plenty, with breathtaking double-stopping a challenge to the soloist; Mutter, plainly, enjoys it enormously. The ‘Tango’ is, like Piazzolla’s essays in the genre, observed through a modern distorting lens, though it was written before the explosion in that composer’s popularity. The final ‘Dance’, marked Jazz feeling, is, according to Mutter, ‘like boogie on speed’, but quite apart from the jazz rhythms there is a feeling of a wild Russian dance. The central ‘Song’, a tender melody with simple chordal accompaniment, is pure love music.

As one would expect, the performance could not be more heartfelt, but then in the Brahms Hungarian Dances, which follow immediately after the Previn, one comes to a snag. So uninhibited is Mutter, pulling the tempo around outrageously with exaggerated tenuti, that the dance element is undermined. It might have worked in a live performance, but here that treatment sounds self-indulgent. Mutter is just as free and slinky in the popular Kreisler pieces, but here the music invites such freedom, as the composer demonstrated in his own performances.

Brilliant as Orkis is, Previn’s playing suggests that theirs is a much more even partnership. The Heifetz arrangements of four big numbers from Porgy and Bess are delectably done, with jazz rhythms idiomatically pointed. And whether or not you resist Mutter’s free expressiveness in any of these pieces, the disc bears witness to her individuality as one of today’s supreme violinists.