The names of great composers often begin with a B, though a CD coupling violin concertos by Beethoven and Britten may still prompt a small electric shock. Trust a discerning musician such as Janine Jansen to bring the pair together and make the union work. Given their premieres 134 years apart, both are works of big passions, and both feature timpani prominently. But their public profiles are very different. Beethoven’s concerto is the repertoire’s acknowledged giant; the Britten, though a masterly work, still seems to need special advocacy.

Jansen’s account, with Paavo Järvi and the London Symphony Orchestra, strongly advertises the concerto’s virtues. Kaleidoscopic moods, from skittish frolics and Spanish heat to final incendiary anger, flicker easily from her bow. But nothing is superficial, least of all the crowning passacaglia, heavy with the sorrows of war. The recording is forthright, and Järvi whips the LSO into a blaze to match Jansen’s passionate commitment to the score. Among recorded versions of the Britten, this now sits at the top.

With Beethoven’s concerto, there’s a far higher pile of CDs to climb. Jansen’s extreme beauty of tone and phrasing is definitely alluring, though it wasn’t until the cadenza in the first movement (she uses Kreisler’s) that I felt her heart had fully opened up. Järvi conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, who play with a period instrument band’s lean thrust and lack of string vibrato: striking in itself, though not always the best setting for Jansen’s essentially romantic art.

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