Daniele Rustioni reviews

Paganini’s First Concerto used to be played by only a handful of devotees – even now, despite taking all the once-traditional cuts, Yehudi Menuhin’s early 1960s stereo account with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Alberto Erede (EMI/Warner) comes closest to making all those Rossini-in-overdrive pyrotechnics sound musically compelling. Since then, a number of distinguished accounts have emerged, ranging from those by Midori and Itzhak Perlman to those by Maxim Vengerov and Hilary Hahn.