Using music from his film score, The Red Violin, the fashionable American composer, John Corigliano, has created a modern version of the great romantic violin concertos. Full of readily accessible melody and liberally spiced with redblooded virtuosity, it is stunningly performed by one of America's top violinists, Michael Ludwig. Conductor, JoAnn Falletta, and her fabulous Buffalo Philharmonic add the spooky Suite from the opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, the sound quality surely in line for a major award.

The Ghosts of Versailles comes the meat of the recording, the Violin Concerto, based on Corigliano’s 1998 score for the film The Red Violin. The work is structurally strange, retaining the feeling of having been stitched together, with three short movements attempting to balance a long first one. It has moments of exquisitely scored neo-Romantic bliss, particularly in the opening Chaconne, with touches of Sibelius in the sweeping violin themes and explosive cadenzas. Michael Ludwig gives a suitably virtuosic performance, showing technical excellence in the wild, scampering scherzo and the breakneck finale, but he is also eminently convincing in his approach to the work’s piecemeal architecture, maintaining the drive and relaxing into the big themes as if they grow organically from the texture. JoAnn Falletta is adept, too, at keeping a tight rein on the work’s brilliant colourations and vast orchestral forces, recorded in crystal-clear detail. But for all its thoroughly enjoyable quasi-Romantic aspirations, it’s still an oddly unsatisfying piece, beautifully wrought but slightly misshapen.

****Film scores do not on the whole make good concert pieces, even when music is the subject of the movie. I have heard this concerto played on record by Joshua Bell, Chloe Hanslip and I Musici of Montreal without being gripped.

Michael Ludwig, though, brings something extra to this performance. For a start, there is nothing slushy or movie-sentimental about his playing, which is hot, sharp and close to the edge. These qualities drive the narrative in a way that lets you forget it was once yoked to a dumb story. The Buffalo Philharmonic play like major-leaguers and JoAnn Falletta keeps it tight. The filler is a suite from Corigiliano’s Met opera, The Ghosts of Versailles.