Obra: Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.82

This candlelit evening at the atmospheric Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with the Chilingirian String Quartet and friends had more of a cosy Christmas feel than yet another World War I commemoration.

There was something for everyone in Maxim Vengerov and Itamar Golan’s recital programme at the Barbican last night. The music of nine different nations was represented in a multicultural extravaganza of shifting horizons, moods and styles.

Delius is a composer who is often misunderstood, the English pastoralism of works like On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring hardly representative of either his cosmopolitan life or the breadth of his output.