Powerful entry in the list of American classics

English violinist Chloe Hanslip's Naxos debut is cinematic and dazzling

English violinist Chloe Hanslip made her first CD with Warner Classics in 2002. She was 14 and it was a batch of lollipops under the baton of Paul Mann, a familiar name to Auckland Philharmonia audiences.

Four years on, her debut with Naxos is a formidable addition to the label's encyclopaedic series of American classics.

Half of the album may be movie music, but it is strictly A list. Take Franz Waxman's Tristan and Isolde Fantasia, a potent concoction of Wagner patched together for one of Joan Crawford's juiciest melodramas, the 1946 Humoresque.

Devout Wagnerians will shudder at the first ripple of harp and surge of piano arpeggio, but this is supreme kitsch, dashed off with vertiginous virtuosics and not a smidgen of shame.

After the dramatic climaxes and Carmen Cavallaro-style tinklings around the Liebestod have left you weak at the knees, Waxman's romp through Enesco's First Romanian Rhapsody is highly recommended. Hanslip reveals the gypsy in her soul, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin follow suit.

The opening track, a Chaconne by John Corigliano, fashioned from his score for Francois Girard's 1998 film The Red Violin, is a more substantial concert piece.

It comes with percussion that will make you fear for the security of household walls and intense playing from Hanslip in more lyrical passages.

The centrepiece must be John Adams' 1993 Violin Concerto, described by its composer as a study in "hypermelody" - rightly so as Hanslip hardly has a rest during the piece's 35 minutes.

Ethereal melodies over shifting orchestral patterns in the first movement recall Debussy; later on, soloist and orchestra indulge in Coplandesque conversations.

The emotionalism of the absorbing second movement is hinted at in its title, Body Through Which the Dream Flows, recalling the sumptuous romanticism of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto.

The Finale, dazzlingly delivered, is cinematic in its criss-crossing rush of semiquavers, reminding me curiously of a montage sequence from Waxman's Humoresque score.

Throughout this major 20th-century concerto, the clarity of the Naxos recording is immaculate, making the balance between soloist and orchestra notably clearer than in Gidon Kremer's 1993 CD.

The result is a rare communion between composer, soloist, conductor and orchestra.

* John Adams, Violin Concerto (Naxos, 8.559302)