Mendelssohn Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings in D minor ^a. Concerto for Violin and Strings in D minor. Marat Bisengaliev (vn); ^a Benjamin Frith (pf); Northern Sinfonia / Andrew Penny.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553844 (58 minutes: DDD).

The Mendelssohn family’s Sunday morning music parties, bringing one marvel after another from the wunderkind Felix, are now legendary. The decision to withhold many of such precocious juvenilia from publication was undoubtedly judicious at the time. But what engaging glimpses of adolescence they offer today – not least the D minor Double Concerto, written in May 1823 at the age of 14, and the main work on this welcome super-bargain-price Naxos disc.

Yes, the development section of its opening Allegro is disproportionately long. Yet revitalized by strokes of harmonic surprise, its flow is self-generating. The benign Adagio possesses a calm remarkable from a teenager, while the finale spills over with youthful joie de vivre. Moreover, your ear is constantly caught by the bewitchingly colourful variety and virtuosity of the solo parts – so nimbly and sympathetically shared here by Marat Bisengaliev and Naxos’s own Mendelssohn devotee, Benjamin Frith. The Northern Sinfonia under Andrew Penny likewise play with all the freshness of new discovery.

The D minor Violin Concerto of the previous year, written for Mendelssohn’s brilliant violinist friend (and teacher), Eduard Rietz, again testifies to heaven-sent facility of craftsmanship, even if the subject-matter itself is more conventionally indebted to the past. Good marks here to the Northern Sinfonia for relish of the telling bass in the slow movement. But Bisengaliev’s breathless tempo for the finale at times undermines rhythmic stability besides allowing streaming semiquavers to degenerate into mere passagework. Reverberant sound, notably in the lower regions, makes it no surprise to discover that the recording venue was a church.

JOC