From the very first bar of some discs you know you are in safe hands – artist, orchestra, conductor, sound recording, balance, acoustic – and this is one of them. You just have to sit back and enjoy it. It is not just the attractive programme, with its welcome admixture of concerto, solos and chamber works, but the exuberant performances, energised, one suspects, by the charismatic young Serbian soloist (the booklet pictures him with black shoulder-length hair in imitation of the famous faked photograph of Paganini).

He presents his credentials with a dazzling account of the Caprice No 5 before Eiji Oue and the RAI players launch into the Op 6 Violin Concerto with all guns blazing. Radulovic´’s commanding technique makes child’s play of Paganini’s myriad technical challenges, matched by a beguiling tone, expressive vocal phrasing and perfect intonation (few have made the harmonics in the G major section of the finale sing quite as sweetly). He plays his own adaptation of Nathan Milstein’s cadenza in the first movement and is not above introducing a few slight textual amendments to the third. Les Trilles du Diable, Radulovic´’s string quintet colleagues, provide no less stylish support in the Cantabile and, joined by pianist Laure Favre-Kahn, in Aleksandar Sedlar’s resourceful, utterly convincing arrangement of the Moses-Fantasy (for the G string alone). Radulovic´ despatches this with tremendous panache and ends as he began with a solo Caprice, No 24 in A minor, the best-known of the set.

This is an exceptional disc by any standards and hard to better as an introduction to Paganini’s genius. In fact, it has everything going for it except the booklet’s two pages of quasi-English devoted to the soloist’s biography. Apart from being a quite exceptionally boring list of venues, artists and orchestras, it should have been proofread by an editor better acquainted with the language.