There’s a wonderful anecdote about Paris-based Spanish violin virtuoso Pablo Sarasate (1844-1908) that was told by the wife of Fritz Kreisler, and is now recounted by Hugh Macdonald in his engaging booklet essay to this Sarasate tribute from James Ehnes. ‘He played with the greatest nonchalance’, she recounted. ‘When he had his violin under his chin and everybody thought he was about to start, he would drop it again, clamp a monocle into his eye and survey his audience. He had a way of seeming to drop the fiddle, taking the audience’s breath away. He would let it slide down his slender figure, only to catch it by the scroll of the neck just in time.’ Listen to the 1904 recording of Sarasate playing his own Zigeunerweisen, and the playing has a lot in common with the demeanour captured so colourfully there: pure and sweet-toned up top, with warmly rounded lower-register smoulder, heard via a technique that’s blindingly fast and precise, perfectly in tune, and especially mesmerising in the highest registers – and all played with such apparent nonchalance that, had he a third hand, he’d probably be smoking a cigarette with it.

To couple the two major works written for Sarasate by his friends Lalo and Saint-Saëns – the former’s five-movement Symphonie espagnole of 1874 and the latter’s Third Violin Concerto of 1880 – is a tried-and-tested recording formula, meaning that James Ehnes, the BBC Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena are up against some pretty stiff existing competition here; although it’s nice to see those two works followed by Sarasate’s own 1881 Concert Fantasy on Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, a work that more often than not gets lumped instead into virtuoso-themed programmes.

There’s also much to enjoy, album-wide, from the playing here. Ehnes, with that elegant, effortless technique of his own, brings a cool, cantabile purity to the Saint-Saëns concerto’s lilting central movement, its silky woodwind soloists also lovingly captured. Similarly, his violin sings with tremendous eloquence through the Lalo’s Andante. It’s then a particularly thoughtfully lyrical ‘Carmen’ Fantasy from Ehnes – a touch of gypsy fire, but with the emphasis mostly, refreshingly, on bringing out its violin-writing’s grace, beauty and melancholic soul. I’m listening to it for the umpteenth time right now as I type, and each time the orchestra drops away to leave Ehnes solo my fingers have been pausing, frozen in the air, while I savour the sheer perfection and beauty of his sound. The softly flautando tone with which he concludes its Lento assai is spellbinding. The temptation to keep repeating his exquisitely articulated, shaped and coloured parallel thirds at the outset of the Moderato finale is almost overwhelming.

In fact it’s the ‘Carmen’ Fantasy that for me is the album highlight. Polished and committed as the performances of the preceding two works are, I find myself at times searching for deeper-seated passion, more bite, from Ehnes. I also can’t quite shake the overall feeling, particularly in the Lalo’s Andante, that this isn’t the orchestra’s music, its finesse and Mena’s fluid handling notwithstanding. For a Lalo/Saint-Saëns pairing of a peppery, silky smoulder and excitement to whisk you off your feet, I’d recommend Perlman and Barenboim. But nota bene, the elegant musical respect Ehnes and his colleagues have paid to the ‘Carmen’ Fantasy is wonderful.