Although only released in Japan, Philips’s 78-CD Arthur Grumiaux Edition was in terms of its consistently high artistic standards the virtual equal of RCA’s vast Heifetz Collection. This five-disc selection is excerpted from it, and is to be strongly recommended.

I was once told on good authority that Heifetz was a keen admirer of Grumiaux’s art, and little wonder. Like Heifetz, Grumiaux was a master of subtle shading, a disciplined stylist with a warm heart whose immaculate musicianship, silken tone and innate composure benefitted everything he played. The differences between Heifetz and Grumiaux were most marked in shorter genre pieces, where the tougher-grained Heifetz was uniquely dazzling (though Grumiaux’s Zigeunerweisen launches plenty of fireworks). But their approaches to Mozart were in many respects similar: energetic, sweet-centred, rhythmically supple and dominated in expressive terms by the laudable principle ‘less is more’. These first Grumiaux versions of the Mozart concertos are especially brilliant, though the stereo re-makes under Sir Colin Davis (9/93) are, like certain of Heifetz’s later Mozart recordings, distinguished by an even more varied tone palette and a marginally wider dynamic range. Here one enjoys hearing Grumiaux’s tempered athleticism and lightly brushed bowing set against a precise but mellow Vienna Symphony Orchestra. It’s also nice to encounter the spurious D major Concerto, its central Andante being a particular delight. I would call this 1950s Mozart series more a supplement to the Davis set than a replacement for it; it’s swings and roundabouts, with either series serving as a credible benchmark.

On November 7, 1954 Grumiaux gave the first performance in modern times of Paganini’s Fourth Concerto, recording it memorably the day after, and while some might crave rather more in terms of overt display (both here and in the two Paganini-Kreisler arrangements) Grumiaux’s poise and relative restraint more than compensate. The Mendelssohn Concerto under Rudolf Moralt is a joy, lively but uncommonly intimate: some of Grumiaux’s soft playing will take your breath away. Likewise in the Fauré, Debussy and Ravel sonatas with István Hajdu, all models of sensitively negotiated chamber playing. Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole is presented in its four-movement version (minus the ‘Intermezzo’), a crisply turned reading; for me the highlight of this all-French fourth CD is Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, where Grumiaux’s elegant, off-the-cuff phrasing rivals, maybe even surpasses, Heifetz himself. Chausson’s Poème is another gem.

In terms of sound, things go fairly well, though there’s a nasty tape edit a few seconds in to Fauré’s third movement and some occasional brief patches of distortion on the Paganini I palpiti (which are also on the parent Japanese set) – nothing too troublesome, while the musical virtues of these performances seem to have grown with the years. Margaret Campbell offers first-rate annotation and I can only hope that Philips follows this wonderful collection with at least three more. You don’t have to be a fiddle fancier to enjoy it, but I can’t imagine than any aspiring young player bent on the highest standards could hope for a finer vintage role model than Arthur Grumiaux.