A winning Brahms Double, violinist and cellist playing with warmth.

Now well in her stride as a recording artist, German violinist Julia Fischer offers this ideal Brahms coupling in strong and sympathetic readings, joined in the Double Concerto by her brilliant young compatriot cellist, Daniel Müller-Schott. In the Violin Concerto, Fischer takes an expansive view of the first movement, freely varying the tempo as she did in her outstanding version of the Tchaikovsky Concerto (4/07). The 23-minute timing even underestimates her spaciousness, as she uses an unidentified cadenza rather shorter than the usual Joachim one (the booklet incorrectly says it’s the Joachim).

Shaham and Kremer offer tauter and brisker accounts of the first movement but Fischer amply justifies her spacious and flexible speeds in the feeling of spontaneity. Her performance never feels self-conscious or too studied and her range of tone and dynamic is extreme, bringing pianissimi of breathtaking delicacy. Thomas Zehetmair with the Northern Sinfonia present the work on a chamber scale – a performance I find exceptionally magnetic – and also take a tauter view. Fischer’s slow movement, too, is expansive while in the finale she lets the tempo relax just enough to allow a persuasive spring in the rhythms, bringing out the Hungarian dance flavour.

The Double Concerto is not nearly as expansive: no doubt the influence of Müller-Schott was important here as the cello takes the lead in introducing each theme, with the cellist matching his partner in warmth and brilliance. The outstanding cellist among the three here is Clemens Hagen, more deeply reflective than his rivals though the slow movement is marred by Harnoncourt’s unduly fast tempo.

Fischer and Müller-Schott are relaxed and easily lyrical in the slow movement, brilliant and thrusting in the finale. An outstanding disc which stands high on the list of this perfect coupling.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [8/2007]