Given his unstinting advocacy of Mieczysław Weinberg in recent years, it was inevitable that Gidon Kremer would eventually tackle the Violin Concerto – a pivotal work in its composer’s output and one that, through the pioneering account by dedicatee Leonid Kogan, was almost his only piece known in the West until the Weinberg renaissance began a quarter of a century ago.

Daniele Gatti may have conducted little Weinberg but the rapport between him, the Leipzig Gerwandhaus and Kremer is evident at the outset of a charged and incisive opening Allegro. The main difference with earlier recordings is the sheer intensity invested into the Allegretto, notably the spectral coda, which segues more potently into an Andante of unforced eloquence. In his booklet interview, Kremer confesses some doubts as to the contrived optimism of the final Allegro, yet its martial undertow never descends into glibness or caricature – with the sudden and unexpected recall of the initial theme closing the work in soulful contemplation.

Kremer is joined by Madara Pētersone for the Sonata for two violins, written soon after the concerto and a portent of things to come in the wiry angularity of its Allegro then ominous unease of a nocturnal Adagio. Such intensity is tempered if hardly diluted in the Allegretto, its lyricism and equability increasingly rare in Weinberg’s chamber music. Kremer rates it alongside the Prokofiev as the high point of an inevitably limited repertoire, and this reading probes deeper than the emotionally detached first recording by Stefan and Gundula Kirpal.

In the absence of Kogan (Melodiya, 1/98) or Ilya Gringolts (Warner, 5/15), Kremer is preferable in the concerto to the technically immaculate if less personal readings by Linus Roth or Benjamin Schmid, any passing technical fallibilities more than outweighed by the magnetism of his playing. Vivid and immediate though slightly airless sound, and a strong recommendation.