For those in far-flung foreign places and younger readers, the name of Max Jaffa may be unfamiliar. Born in London in 1911, he formed his own band aged 17 (the Max Jaffa Salon Orchestra), became the youngest-ever leader of the Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 1929 and, after the Second World War, formed the Max Jaffa Trio with cellist Reginald Kilbey and pianist Jack Byfield (‘Max Jaffa and the Two Pips’ was the joke at the time). From 1956 for the next 27 years his concerts with the trio and the Palm Court Orchestra were broadcast from The Spa, Scarborough. Jaffa was a national treasure. Everyone, whatever their musical tastes, had heard of him. He died in London in 1991.

In 2000 Simon Blendis was able to buy Jaffa’s Peter Guarnerius violin and in 2019 acquired from his family his sheet music library. During the first lockdown, Blendis and his pianist wife Saoko began playing some of the violin-and-piano scores in online concerts. This disc is the welcome outcome: music from Max Jaffa’s library, played on his violin – a mix of the familiar, the unpublished and the never previously recorded.

That’s the background. Should you shell out? For the repertoire, certainly, if you have a fondness for the palm-court type of repertoire: brief, genial, melodic pieces, nothing to frighten the horses, and written purely to enchant you while sipping your Earl Grey and tucking into the cucumber sandwiches; the kind of music, indeed, that all but a few violinists choose not to play today. For the recorded sound, yes with reservations: the violin is beautifully captured in a natural, airy acoustic; the piano, too, sounds well but, for my taste, is placed too far away from the microphone and not close enough to the violin. No matter. The ear quickly adjusts.

For the performances, yes. Blendis, thank goodness, eschews sentimentality (like Jaffa himself) but not sentiment. He uses portamento discreetly and only when appropriate. He is an unshowy player whose palpable affection for this genre is communicated in every bar. In short, he lets the music speak for itself. Discoveries there are aplenty. Try Jura-Jura (ascribed by Blendis in his fascinating and detailed booklet to Korda-Bakony, about whom he has been unable to find anything) and the exuberant Dobra-Dobra (a title that translates as ‘Goody-Goody!’) with the admirable Saoko Blendis keeping everything going at a furious lick. Michael Spivakowsky’s Addio Firenze is one of those that have never been heard before (the manuscript was among Jaffa’s papers); Reynaldo Hahn’s ineffably lovely If My Songs Were Only Winged! has been recorded many times, never more suavely than here.

I have a few caveats. Hubay’s popular Hejre Kati, heard here with Jaffa’s cuts, hasn’t quite the panache of Aaron Rosand, say, nor does Blendis have the same vivid tone and playfulness that Heifetz brings to, respectively, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair and Herbert’s À la valse. But overall a lovely disc, warmly recommended not merely for the initiative and playing of these two fine musicians but for giving a hefty nudge to other violin-and-piano duos.