If there’s a problem with this disc – and it’s a minor problem - it’s that you can’t gawp at a recording. Leonidas Kavakos has put together some of the most demanding showstoppers in a violinist’s box of tricks, and dispatches each with elan. Yet however brilliant his playing of pieces, such as Paganini’s Variations on God Save the King – which opens with the performer simultaneously plucking and bowing the strings and goes only more pear-shaped from there – it’s not quite so impressive when we can’t see as well as hear.
Something similar goes for the delicate mandolin-imitating bow-work of Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra, with which Kavakos has made my jaw drop in the concert hall. Still, it’s a hugely enjoyable disc, with pianist Enrico Pace joining Kavakos in zingy performances of Stravinsky, Strauss, Sarasate and Wieniawski, alongside less obvious showpieces, including Britten’s Reveille, a gorgeously eerie pre-echo of Peter Grimes.
