The Extreme Violin in this album's title simply consists of a collection of virtuoso violin favorites, drawn from the catalog of the French label Naïve and featuring a variety of violinists from its stable of artists. Some of the works are encore pieces perennially popular with concert artists; some are longer pieces, or movements from larger works, that have traditionally provided violinists with black-belt-level challenges. The performers of these pieces are mostly from the Russian School's current generation. The new ingredient in this set is the inclusion of some of Naïve's recordings of Baroque violin music. The label has played a pioneering role in presenting Baroque music with the vigor and, where appropriate, the sexiness it deserves, and it has showcased a new generation of mostly Italian players who treat Vivaldi and Bach with the same abandon the virtuosi of the nineteenth century brought to their art. Sample one of the tracks featuring violinist Fabio Biondi in Baroque music (perhaps track 1, 15, or 16), and you may find yourself pursuing other recordings of this sort. For the present, what's impressive is that the sequence of recordings makes sense; the Baroque pieces hold up expressively when placed next to the Romantics. The only complaint is the remastering; where there are lurches, they come from the engineering side rather than from the music. A reasonable sampler of the state of the art of the European violin virtuoso.