Classical music on record continues to thrive, or so it seems judging from the plethora of boxed sets that have come our way this year. As ever ... the Soviet Union’s greatest violinist ...

An exquisite rendition of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony from the SCO under Maxim Emelyanychev heads up Ken Walton ’s list of the year’s best classical music ... Collective, ever on the track ...

The rigid forms of classical music ... of stand-alone orchestral music that evoked anything from a painting or poem to a feeling of nationalistic fervour. The Romantic era gave birth to the virtuoso.