Sibelius's one violin concerto is undoubtedly the most popular work of its kind written in the 20th century. Pretty well every violinist (apart from Milstein) has played it. I came to know it as a teenager, with an LP of Ginette Neveu, and I pretty well played it to death. At the age of 20 I was in the Festival Hall in London to hear Heifetz play it (not much to watch with Heifetz -- just a moving left hand and right arm, and that was it for 35 minutes). The result of all this is that, for me, the Sibelius concerto is just too familiar for me to be able to approach it with fresh ears. So I was delighted this morning to be able to sit back and enjoy a CD featuring Christian Tetzlaff, with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard.

I think it helps that the performers here are Scandinavian and German. Too often the Sibelius concerto is mauled around, sentimentalised, given extra colour and warmth, dragged towards becoming a kind of Scandinavian Tchaikovsky. The music doesn't need it and does not benefit from it (viz the highly undesirable recording some years ago from Vengerov and Barenboim). Tetzlaff is an excellent, capable and intelligent violinist who plays the music straight and who doesn't mess around with the tempo too much (though one might query his concept of allegro ma non tanto for the finale; the polar bears here seem to be dancing in a veritable frenzy). Dausgaard and the Danes collaborate to give us a true black and white Nordic Sibelius, not the technicolour version that is often dished up. I never thought I'd really enjoy the Sibelius violin concerto so much again, but I did here -- even to the extent of re-starting the work when the telephone interrupted it around 10 minutes in.