Every encounter I’ve so far had with Benjamin Schmid’s playing has proved enjoyable. An all-round musician who can adapt to any number of musical styles, he habitually gives his all in pursuit of whichever specific work is to hand. His accounts of both Bartók concertos are warmly sympathetic, alert to detail and appreciative of the music’s musical ground roots, Richard Strauss in the dizzy second movement of the First Concerto, for example (echoes in the latter of Strauss’s Burleske). Schmid focuses the warm but fragile emotional climate of the first movement, reminding me more of Joseph Szigeti’s recording of the First Portrait (same music, different context) than of other performers in the concerto: the sense of rapture is very similar, and so are the tempos. I praised Christian Tetzlaff’s marvellous recording of this movement as ‘flora and fauna translated in terms of sound’; and, to be fair, Tetzlaff still has the edge, although Schmid runs him pretty close.

In the Second Concerto it’s again the slow movement that draws from Schmid the most responsive playing, both in the lyrical outer sections and in the playful badinage that lightens the mood at the movement’s centre. The larger-scale outer movements are also excellent, with Tibor Bogányi and his Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra making sure that the woodwinds are clearly audible. Schmid’s seasoned approach suggests long familiarity with both scores but it’s the more sophisticated Second Concerto, music also suggestive of rustic undertones, that benefits most from his balance of heart and head, much aided, of course, by a fine technique.

As to Schmid’s rivals in No 2, I’ve already celebrated Tetzlaff and Hannu Lintu for their ‘compelling and comprehensive overview of [a] multifaceted masterpiece’, a view I would stand by. Patricia Kopatchinskaja under Peter Eötvös promotes, as I’ve previously suggested, a feisty lilt and a sense of danger-infused gamesmanship that’s quite unlike any other recording of the work, whereas Barnabás Kelemen (under Zoltán Kocsis) keeps the heat full on for the duration. Like Schmid, the leaner-toned but equally compelling Isabelle Faust couples both concertos together, as does the more considered James Ehnes, who adds the ethereal Viola Concerto. I’d say that with Ehnes and Schmid it’s more or less a case of level pegging, quality-wise, though Chandos offers the marginally more vivid recording and that significant viola bonus is certainly enticing. Both are excellent but a first-choice coupling still has to be Tetzlaff and Lintu.