Arnold Schoenberg completed his Violin Concerto in 1936, a few years after moving to the USA to escape the growing menace of the Nazis in Germany. While it was crafted using Schoenberg’s 12-tone method, the piece looks back to a more tonal era of composition. Nonetheless, the composer himself described it as “extremely difficult, just as much for the head as for the hands.”

In this new recording by Jack Liebeck – incoming Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music – head and hands fade into the background as the violinist highlights another element: heart. He gives a sumptuous performance here, replete with moments of delicate, glimmering colour and bright, flashes of fire. Andrew Gourlay and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are on point, ever alive to the work’s angular turns and surprising shifts,...