Few readers will be familiar with these unpretentious and accessible Soviet-era sonatas. The most distinctive is the two-movement score by Myaskovsky which reached its final form in 1947. Without the shattering emotive force of Prokofiev’s contemporaneous First Violin Sonata, this is music that satisfies in quiet, vaguely Gallic fashion. The opening movement has the wistfulness of (and makes occasional allusion to) Myaskovsky’s 25th Symphony while the second is a more technically demanding theme and variations. Its neglect is such that the present issue is claimed to be its first commercial recording.

Vissarion Shebalin was a Myaskovsky pupil and it shows. His own four-movement Violin Sonata dates from 1958 yet remains academically present and correct, its Scherzo looking back as far as the corresponding movement of Borodin’s Second Symphony, its finale channelling Stravinsky’s Petrushka. The distinctive Russian quality of these works is lacking at times in Vasily Nechaev’s Violin Sonata of 1928, although its more antic, Prokofiev-tinged finale makes amends.

Sasha Rozhdestvensky recorded this enterprising recital in Moscow last December prior to his father’s death. It was not, presumably, meant to be a family tribute but having on board his mother, the great Viktoria Postnikova, means that it now becomes so by default. One thing the programme lacks is the quizzical attitude that made Gennady Rozhdestvensky such an individualistic maestro. Still, he was a great one for championing off-piste scores in difficult times. The music-making is hard to fault and the sound engineering is always sympathetic even with the violin balanced quite close. There are helpful notes by Richard Whitehouse.