Easily the most substantial work in this enjoyably light-hearted programme is the Glazunov Violin Concerto, still generally undervalued because of its conservative idiom. Not that Shaham’s account is in any way radical. After Maxim Vengerov’s intense and penetrating Teldec version, Shaham’s sounds relaxed and smoochy, his warm-toned instrument set somewhat closer than the orchestra in the wide open spaces of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The generous romantic manner almost but not quite conceals a few moments of suspect intonation that Jascha Heifetz would never have passed.
Unlike the Glazunov, Kabalevsky’s work is in three separate, small-scale movements. One of his ‘youth’ concertos, it dates from 1948, the year in which most of his peer group faced ideological censure. It isn’t great music, and yet there is a natural, unforced quality about its invention that stands up well enough. The slow movement is memorable (despite its casual appropriation of the ‘wind in the graveyard’ effect from Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata) and the watered-down Prokofiev of the rest is by no means unattractive. The orchestral playing here is impressively clean and often radiantly beautiful. The Tchaikovsky Souvenir d’un lieu cher is heard in Glazunov’s orchestration and the Valse-scherzo wraps things up in skittering, suitably dazzling fashion. Although room might have been found for something more, one can see why this was felt to be the right item with which to close. Heard live, such a performance would bring the house down.'