You will struggle to find a more impassioned, feisty account of Bach’s solo music for violin. Verbier Festival Gold, the joint label collaboration from the Verbier Festival and DG, treats us to Kristóf Baráti’s Bach recital from the 2016 festival. For a taster of this electrifying performance, head straight to the Allemande from the Partita in B minor – crikey, someone had their spinach for breakfast. Baráti’s bow sears with intent. His sound is taut and vibrant, clenched in an intensity that is a hairline width away from the limits of his 1703 ‘Lady Harmsworth’ Stradivarius. It’s a performance that makes Linus Roth sound practically nostalgic in comparison, Leonidas Kavakos overly academic. And though Baráti’s vacillations into tender evocation, combined with Bach’s dancing dotted rhythms, leave me feeling a tad seasick, I can’t help but be a fan.

The studio-perfect intonation continues in the Adagio from the Sonata in G minor. Baráti plays like the world is ending. Buildings may be burning, but Baráti gives us total commitment to this drama drenched in black and white. There is the slightest lack of breath – one imagines that this sonata opened the live recital – but Baráti quickly finds his zen. The Adagio closes in spectacular ambiguity, and the Gigue – what a first note! – is as capricious as one could need.

Sure, there are stylistic decisions that I don’t agree with, but this is an altogether convincing account that excels in a specific approach towards Bach performance. I’m left feeling thoroughly impressed, but sadly, not wholly moved. There’s far more magic to be conjured in the Andante from the Sonata in A minor, for instance, and the amount of portato in the Largo from the Sonata in C major makes me want to scream (what’s wrong with the simplest of legatos?). Yet superb sound and a sense of liveness from Verbier Festival Gold make this album extremely enjoyable.