I want to pick up a strand that emerged here two weeks ago in another context and develop it a wee bit, because it concerns an extraordinary story in classical music.

It relates to a new recording of Schumann's Violin Concerto, performed by violinist Isabelle Faust with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, which has been released on the Harmonia Mundi label and will be reviewed tomorrow in the Sunday Herald.

Robert Schumann wrote that concerto in 1853. The request for a concerto-type work from the composer had come directly from his close friend Joseph Joachim, the greatest violinist of the era, and consistent champion of Schumann, Brahms and others. By way of a taster, Schumann wrote Joachim a single-movement Fantasie for violin and orchestra. Joachim took it straight out onto the concert circuit, while Schumann immediately started work writing a full-scale concerto for violin and orchestra in three movements.

Schumann completed the concerto quickly, was delighted with the results and delivered the score to the violinist. Joachim took one look at it and backed off. He did do some rehearsals on the music, but it was never played. Joachim sensed that Schumann's creative powers were on the wane: the composer was already exhibiting signs of instability in his mental health, which were causing great concern and alarm among his family and circle. At his own insistence he was committed to an asylum in March 1854. He never came out of it. The violin concerto was shelved and never played.

After Schumann's death in 1856 in the asylum near Bonn, a complete catalogue of his works was being compiled for publication. His widow Clara, who held the same view as Joachim about the violin concerto, furiously resisted its inclusion in the catalogue. It's been suggested that she and Joachim feared Schumann's reputation would suffer if a work considered flawed and written in his state of mental decline should be allowed to be out there.

Clara, dare I suggest, wanted the responsibility out of her hands. She passed the buck, and handed the score of the concerto over to the care of Joachim. I've always wondered why the two of them, if they really believed it was a duff piece, written by a man who no longer had full control of his mind, didn't destroy it. Was there something in it which suggested to them it might be for another time? Anyway, Joachim in turn decided to pass the buck onto the future. He had the score locked away, leaving an instruction in his will that it was neither to be published nor played for the next 100 years.

Time passed. Clara died in 1896. Joachim died in 1907. In 1937, following a legal arrangement with Joachim's heirs, the score of the violin concerto was finally published and arrangements began for a first performance. An inspection copy was sent to the young American star violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, who spotted that there was a masterpiece, albeit a tough one to crack, in here. Moreover, he felt the concerto furnished a missing link in the 19th-century history of the violin concerto as a species.

Menuhin was desperate to play it and applied for performing rights. He ran into a brick wall. It was 1937 and Menuhin was of Jewish ancestry. He was categorically refused performance rights by the Nazis. Menuhin, the following year, went off to the States and made the first commercial recording of the concerto with John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic.

Back in Germany, meanwhile, the Nazis found themselves with a dilemma. They had effectively kicked out Menuhin, but they needed Schumann's Violin Concerto on the stocks: they'd banned Mendelssohn's music, including his Violin Concerto, the most popular of all concertos, because the composer was Jewish. So they needed a new Aryan potboiler, and Schumann's concerto was selected. (Totally the wrong piece, of course: it's a masterpiece, but the antithesis of a potboiler.) So the long-awaited world premiere of Schumann's 1853 Violin Concerto was given in Berlin in 1937 by the Berlin Philharmonic with Karl Karl Bohm, a Nazi sympathiser, conducting, and a relatively little-known soloist.

The concerto is well out there now, though it's still not that frequently played in all parts: the RSNO delved into its records last week and turned up only two outings for the Schumann in the history of the composition: one in 1965, the other in 1967. The BBC SSO has played it twice, more recently, in March 2010 and in November 2011. The SCO looks a strong supporter of the piece, unsurprisingly, given Robin Ticciati's interest in the composer. Indeed, he and the SCO will be playing it in Scotland next season (three performances in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen) with the exquisite Alina Ibragimova as soloist. Schumann vindicated, methinks.