Edgar Moreau salutes his family heritage and highlights landmarks in his artistic development with Transmission – music by Bloch, Korngold, Bruch and Ravel, recorded with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Michael Sanderling. Moreau’s mother is of Polish-Jewish extraction and all five works on the album have a connection with Jewish culture. The largest work on the programme is Bloch’s Schelomo, which Moreau describes as “a majestic meeting of concerto and symphony, rich and colourful in its orchestration and full of contrasts”.

Medieval Baebes and other far greater shocks to the bourgeoisie have come along. Wild adventures placed under the rubric of performances of Vivaldi's Four Seasons are commonplace. Yet Nigel Kennedy continues to roost atop the classical sales charts in Europe, and even to command a decent following in the U.S. despite a low American tolerance for British eccentricity. How does he do it? He has kept reinventing himself successfully. Perhaps he's the classical world's version of Madonna: he's possessed of both unerring commercial instincts and with enough of a sense of style to be able to dress them up as forms of rebellion. Inner Thoughts is a collection of slow movements – inner movements of famous concertos from Bach and Vivaldi to Brahms, Bruch, and Elgar.

Making her debut on Decca, Alisa Weilerstein presents three major works of the cello repertoire with Daniel Barenboim leading the Staatskapelle Berlin. The star vehicle, naturally, is Edward Elgar's Concerto in E minor, which Weilerstein plays with commanding presence, rich tone, and emotional depth. Most listeners will be drawn primarily to this performance because of the piece's familiarity, and Weilerstein's charisma and passionate playing make it the album's main attraction. Yet listeners should give Weilerstein and Barenboim credit for following the Elgar with an important if not instantly recognizable or approachable modernist work, Elliott Carter's powerful Cello Concerto. Weilerstein is quite bold to play this intensely dramatic and angular composition, and while it's unlikely to appeal to the majority of fans who adore the Elgar, it deserves its place on the program for its seriousness and extraordinary displays of solo and orchestral writing. To close, Weilerstein plays Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei, a Romantic work that returns the program to a mellow and melancholy mood and brings the CD to a satisfying close. Decca's reproduction is excellent, putting Weilerstein front and center with full resonance, but not leaving the vibrant accompaniment of the orchestra too far behind her.

‘An excellent record, beautifully played, splendidly recorded, in every way highly rewarding’ (Gramophone)

For two consecutive years listeners to Classic FM have voted Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto their favourite among 300 classical works. His melodies have instant appeal and it is good to see three comparative rarities on this disc. Bruch loved alto-register instruments such as the clarinet and viola, and he wrote these works in 1911 when giant leaps were taking place in the development of music, all of which he eschewed in favour of mid-19th-century Romanticism. While the clarinet rides orchestral accompaniment with no difficulty, the viola sits right in the middle and can be drowned (a hazard in performing the Double Concerto but avoided in the recording studio). The viola Romance is a gem, while the Eight Pieces are colourful and varied. All the performers do ample justice to this beautiful and unashamedly Romantic music.

In his second EMI Classics recordings of Bruch’s two best-loved works, Perlman is joined by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta. He dedicated this recording to his great predecessor Jascha Heifetz, saying that “his artistry will always be my inspiration”.

There are several reasons to own this Vox Box 2CD set. For the first, it includes five great violin concertos in some of the very best performances in their discography. For the second, Ivry Gitlis (born 1922) is a great living violinist and these recordings made in early 1950s show his art in the best way, when Ivry's violin sounded powerful and brilliant.