Most of this concert, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie last New Year’s Eve, is like being driven in the back seat of a top-of-the-range Mercedes along the autoroutes of France (with a brief final spin on an autobahn). Everything is so smooth, effortless, pleasingly comfortable, the engine purrs and the driver knows these roads well – he doesn’t even have a map! We know that there will be no diversions down unknown roads tonight.

That said, the average Berliner of the sort that is happy to pay top dollar for a Silvesterkonzert may well be unfamiliar with Chabrier’s Overture to his opéra bouffe L’étoile, but it is a reassuringly buoyant curtain-raiser. And then – oh, the glamour of it! – the striking figure of Anne-Sophie Mutter, the ultimate in sophistication (and allegedly the world’s highest-paid soloist). Her performance of Saint-Saëns’s evergreen showpiece is immaculate and, in the final pages, really quite exciting. Then there’s the attractive yet strangely forgettable suite from Massenet’s Le Cid before Anne-Sophie’s return for a second perfectly executed performance – but surely Ravel’s Tzigane should be more dangerous and mischievous than this fellow with exemplary manners? Poulenc next, and the Berlin players dress it in a sumptuous sugar coating (listen to the beguiling unison strings in the second movement of the suite from Les biches). After that, Ravel again. I can’t remember another performance of La valse that was so carefree before the unsettling final pages when Rattle suddenly (and highly effectively) becomes first sinister and then hideously murderous. The all-French programme is rounded off with a German encore.

There are no separate tracks for the Massenet or Poulenc pieces. There is not a single word about any of the music or the composers or the artists, so anyone coming to it all for the first time will be left in the dark. Pity – it’s just the kind of programme that might get a newcomer to classical music hooked. In the end, though, there is nothing remotely unmissable here and little one would want to return to repeatedly.