Violinist Gioconda De Vito was a key figure in the renaissance of Italian string playing after 1945. With her broad phrasing, ample tone and generous vibrato, she excelled in performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto using Joachim’s cadenza, as in this 1941 recording. The Manchester Guardian wrote of her 1949 recording of Mozart’s G major Concerto: ‘Every note was perfectly intoned and of individual life, yet as easefully and indivisibly belonging to the phrases of song as waves in a flowing sea…quite heavenly’.