Bruch and Brahms is a logical coupling if you think about it – room enough on CD to replace the traditional Bruch/Mendelssohn coupling – and historically pertinent, with the works separated by a mere decade. Both works also share an essentially symphonic approach to the genre, Bruch’s First Concerto so much more than the saccharine display vehicle to which it is sometimes reduced.

To listen to Sarah Chang is to be bathed in the sheer beauty of her sound. It can yield some sublime moments: the way the violin line emerges out of the orchestra in the first movement of the Bruch, or the sheer finesse of every phrase in both works, virtuosity worn lightly but unmistakable none the less.

But she’s not a player to whom you turn to be startled, or one who makes you reassess a work you thought you knew – unlike Kremer, Mullova or Zehetmair, to take just three modern-day players. Interpretatively, she tends to follow received wisdom and the risk-taking is left to others. You don’t, for example, experience anew the rusticity of either finale (unlike Oistrakh), while in the Brahms, you don’t get the sense of struggle of Repin or the (arguably overplayed) grand vistas of Znaider. Instead, you tend to find yourself admiring the playing per se rather than gasping at the greatness of the musical invention. While Brahms’s harmonic shifts in the slow movement sound musical and poetic in the hands of Chang and the hyper-refined Dresden Philharmonic, they don’t tingle the spine as they can in the most visionary performances.

And in the Bruch, simply turn back the clock to Oistrakh (Dante Lys), Milstein (Naxos Historical) or Menuhin (EMI) to be reminded that the work requires no additional sweetening.