After 500 commercial recordings, mainly together, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields have been one of the most dependable names in the business for half a century. So with the great man turning 90 next year, there’s more than a bit of interest in how American violinist Joshua Bell goes in his very first recording as the new music director of the venerable institution founded in Sir Neville’s living room back in 1958.

Short answer: really well.

Nothing to scare the warhorses in his choice of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh of course, which he and the Academy worked up during a favourably reviewed American concert tour. But succeeding a legend? Well, Bell’s never been one to shy away from potential humiliation, as he famously demonstrated by busking in a Washington DC metro (net result: $32 in 45 minutes and only seven people stopping to listen).

Here, he doesn’t try to impose his personality on music most of us could whistle in our concert-hall sleep. And in this day of new editions of everything, and bold personal statements, and authentic blah-blah-blah, it’s refreshing to hear a guy on a high-profile mission simply standing with his violin and directing Grandma to play along with all the sparkle she can muster. The recorded sound is great, leaping out of the speakers and making you want to rock the house with it. And the performances themselves are none too shabby either, crisply articulated and with a real sense of energy. Sure, this isn’t the profound insight of Klemperer, who made this coupling famous. In particular, the deep-and-meaningfuls in the Allegretto of the Seventh don’t fare quite as well as the ebullient passages of the Fourth.

Yet it’s anything but the microwaveable bangers-and-mash of a production-line supplier. More like a potentially exciting rebirth.