Bruch’s Second Concerto is a strong work of considerable originality; it might well have become more popular but for the inevitable comparisons with its loveable predecessor. I always enjoy listening to Antje Weithaas’s playing and here, with excellent balance and well-disciplined orchestral support, one can admire the inspiring range of her performance, from untrammelled passionate outbursts to touching, delicate intimacy, often within a few bars.

On Salvatore Accardo’s fine 1977 account of this concerto with the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Kurt Masur, the violin is more closely recorded, with more uniformly projected tone. Accardo plays very expressively but his performance lacks the range of Weithaas’s. However, Masur ensures the orchestra is a more dynamic partner, relishing the music’s romantic warmth and imparting to the finale a Beethovenian vigour that the new version lacks.

Weithaas’s sensitive expression is just as effective in the Scottish Fantasy, whose gloomy opening is splendidly atmospheric. And her seemingly nonchalant virtuosity near the end of the finale reminds us that, like the Second Concerto, the Fantasy was written for the great Spanish virtuoso Sarasate, whose recordings show the same easy command of fast passages (if not Weithaas’s precision). Here too there are places where one wishes the orchestra could play with freer expression but, all in all, this is an auspicious start to CPO’s projected series of all Bruch’s music for violin and orchestra.