The most interesting item here is a wild amalgam of folk-derived dance music and orchestral rabble-rousing from Tajikistan-born Benjamin Yusupov, his Cello Concerto, the second movement (of four) like Schelomo on Russian soil, its billowing climaxes not dissimilar to those in Bloch’s masterpiece. Misha Maisky’s playing is all that you could wish for. You’ll find the Concerto on a bonus disc that sits aside the main programme. Prior to Yusupov, Maisky multitracks with himself eightfold for the Preludio to Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No 1, a well-integrated body of sound, fleshy and warmly expressive.

Maisky’s very individual brand of tonal intensity suits some pieces better than others, the Adagio from The Limpid Stream by Shostakovich responding especially well to his approach, Britten’s tragicomic Sonata too, whereas Stravinsky’s deceptively simple ‘Russian Maiden’s Song’ is too fussy by half and in Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances the harmonics in the fifth dance (taken very slowly) aren’t always spot-on, intonation-wise, though the succeeding ‘Dance from Bucium’ is beautifully played. As to music from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (the fifth and eighth movements, the latter transcribed from its violin original), they’re tender, no doubt about that, and sincerely expressed, but maybe just a tad too demonstrably emotional – too much of this world rather than of the next, perhaps?

That’s the way I hear it, though you couldn’t fault the actual quality of Maisky’s playing. Piazzolla’s 12-minute Le Grand Tango (written for Rostropovich) lives up to its title and the Maiskys (Misha and pianist Lily) suggest a very Latin brand of passion caught on the wing. Miniatures by Prokofiev and Webern effectively interpreted complete a programme that, viewed as a piece, scores many more hits than misses.