By accident or design this pairing arrives hard on the heels of Alina Ibragimova’s Shostakovich violin concertos for the same label (7/20). That project perhaps looks more Russian than it is but the quest for ‘authentic’ tone and timbre remains an important element in the mix. This time we are in Cologne and the music-making, exciting though it is, feels timbrally deracinated, leaner, more forensic, taking us further from the sonic template established by earlier Soviet-Russian advocates. It might be argued that Mstislav Rostropovich, instigator of so many masterpieces, became overly ruminative in his later years, outpaced by the likes of Heinrich Schiff with the composer’s son directing (Philips, 10/85).

Alban Gerhardt, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and his former orchestra are tauter still. They deliver a crisply articulated white dwarf of a First Concerto, the controlled hysteria of the outer movements well conveyed even with a somewhat reticent first horn. Dark corners are certainly well lit in the central Moderato, taken as briskly as I’ve ever heard it; the tempo respects the metronome mark rather than the performance tradition. Gerhardt has never been one for lachrymose vibrato and his cadenza is purposeful. The finale fairly dazzles.

In the later work the rethink is sufficiently radical to reset its expressive arc, with a breezier opening Largo, more deliberate central Allegretto and a tendency to seek expressive homogeneity where others have played up the quizzical shifts in mood. Fortunately the booklet notes – as extensive as ever from this source if not always the easiest read in physical format – set out to explain the thinking behind these choices. For all his ‘adoration’ of Rostropovich, Gerhardt wants us to go back to the truth of the marks on the page. I wonder. Given what we know of Soviet editorial unreliability and Shostakovich’s own neurotic propensity to rush his fences as a performer, the results may or may not strike you as revelatory. Politics apart, the composer’s colleagues were too talented a group to produce carbon copies of each other’s interpretations. Now it is Gerhardt’s turn.

All in all a fascinating challenge to existing favourites, captured in bright and immediate sound. The production is credited to Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the brilliant, well-nigh flawless soloist spotlit but not implausibly so.