These recordings of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Septet were made in 2019 during Leonidas Kavakos’s tenure as artist-in-residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. His performance of the Concerto is striking on several counts. To start with, he conducts from the violin, which is no longer such a novelty, really, except that here he employs a full string section – and, indeed, from its sonority to its pacing, his interpretation is conceived on a fairly grand scale. He’s also supplied his own elaborate and quite dramatic cadenzas, based on those Beethoven composed for the piano concerto arrangement (Op 61a).

Kavakos’s playing is articulate, deeply expressive and tonally ravishing, even in the most exposed, high-lying passages. The BRSO are with him every step of the way, and that’s particularly impressive given that the violinist takes an unusually supple approach to tempo, italicising nearly every significant harmonic shift, and often slowing to savour the surprise. It’s all unfailingly musical, but it does make the first movement, in particular, feel episodic. The Larghetto is taken quite slowly but is beautifully sustained, even if Kavakos sometimes stretches the music nearly to its breaking point. One has only to listen to the first few minutes to hear how heart-stoppingly beautiful his playing – and the BRSO’s – can be. I find his flashy cadenza linking the slow movement with the finale more than a bit jarring, and then the rondo itself a bit too studied; after such raptness, one really wants a breath of fresh air. And I do wonder if some of the conspicuous extended breaths and emphases he indulges in throughout the score are less interpretative choices and more the result of conducting while playing and needing to show the orchestra where the beat should fall.

I have absolutely no nits to pick in the Septet, however; it’s a glorious account full of incident and humour, and played with burnished tone and rhythmic élan. The gentle swaying motion six musicians from the BRSO (with Kavakos taking the violin part) give the Adagio cantabile makes it almost a barcarolle – and a magical one, at that. Equally memorable is the fourth movement, a set of theme and variations that in some performances can feel formulaic in its figuration but is so vividly characterised that here it becomes one of the work’s high points.

The programme closes with five of the 16 sets of folk tune variations Beethoven composed in 1818-19 on commission from a Scottish publisher. Meant for household use by amateurs, they’re unassuming but still offer enough subtle felicities to merit attentive listening, and are charmingly played by Kavakos and pianist Enrico Pace.