‘Spiritual and not sentimental, intellectual and not emotional’ were Schoenberg’s performance values, according to the conductor Hermann Scherchen, and by those lights Michael Barenboim does well with the Violin Concerto. He is fully in command of his formidable solo part, famously written as if for ‘a 12-fingered violinist’, and his tone is full and even Brahmsian where other soloists such as Rolf Schulte (Naxos, 1/09) and Pierre Amoyal (Apex, 5/86) seem encouraged by the work’s apparent spirit of classical detachment to run hot and cold over the appropriate degrees of vibrato and portamento.

This is a concert performance, and the younger Barenboim’s eloquence in the many recitative-like sections is clearly designed to project to the back of the Musikverein, whereas Hilary Hahn makes good use of a fine DG studio recording to slim back her sound, and never digs in so hard that her tone sours. She and her conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen understand, better than anyone else on record, that this music does not need to be strident or confrontational to make its point. In the finale’s marche militaire interlude the Barenboims are forthright and foursquare where Hahn bends the rhythms as if playing a Schubert rondo. Michael Barenboim has played the work with several conductors, and a broadcast of his 2013 performance with Michael Gielen shows what a difference it makes to have a conductor with a firm grasp and a light hand on textures that aspire at once towards Romantic density and Classically quick repartee.

The Piano Concerto presents fewer intrinsic balance problems, and Peral’s microphones offer a stalls-ear perspective rather than the ringside seat of Boulez’s previous recording with Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra (Philips/DG, 6/01). Daniel Barenboim’s full-blooded approach to the solo part is matched by conducting more prepared to admit ebb and flow than before, though this can lead to passing moments of uncertainty, such as at 2'02" in the first movement. Overall, however, Barenboim and Boulez prove Scherchen’s dichotomy to be artificial, more successfully so than any previous version I’ve heard: there’s as much heart as head to the sudden anguish of the Adagio and the relief of its resolution in the finale.