This glossy package represents Anne-Sophie Mutter’s tribute to Mendelssohn’s anniversary year, including a DVD – with Mutter performing as well as waxing lyrical about the composer – as well as a CD. “I’ve been in absolute Mendelssohn rapture for some time now,” says Mutter, and we see her in action in the Concerto with Masur as well as with her trio colleagues, Previn and Harrell. The DVD offers an interesting insight into her own take on the composer, and is undoubtedly fascinating viewing for violin students, but I didn’t feel compelled to watch it more than once.

The CD, on the other hand, is an intriguing proposition. For a start, it allows us to look back quarter of a century to her early recording of the E minor Concerto with the elderly Karajan. Suffice to say that this new one has a lot more vim and vigour, notwithstanding the fact that Masur is actually older than Karajan was at the time of the earlier recording. It’s impossible not to be impressed by Mutter’s playing – here and throughout the disc. Every last detail has been dissected and considered, every phrase is minutely shaded; the subtleties of her bowing could in themselves fill a review. And the rapport with Masur and the orchestra is clear. Yet I find the results strangely unmoving. It’s live, but everything is so highly refined that it doesn’t sound it: in Mutter’s hands, the music has become perfectly embalmed. Among modern contenders, Joshua Bell has far more soul, and Hilary Hahn an appealing combination of taut propulsion and beauty of sound.

The Sonata performance also bristles with ideas, and Mutter has an altogether gentler approach than Makhtin and Berezovsky, who made it sound like the illegitimate offspring of Beethoven. But Mutter’s slow movement is desperately drawn out. The finale comes off best, though Previn sounds stressed by the fiendish piano-writing. Keyboard virtuosity is central to the First Piano Trio, too, though the piano not only dazzles but also forms the epicentre of the texture. Gilad fulfilled this role admirably in the Pentatone recording with Fischer and Müller- Schott. Alas, Previn is not the pianist he once was, which means steady tempi and a palpable aura of fear, which even full-blooded playing from Mutter and Harrell cannot disguise.