Some years ago while working as a freelance newspaper journalist I trailed the LSO on a concert tour of Israel. Sir Colin Davis was conducting, Maxim Vengerov was the featured soloist and the work he played was the Beethoven concerto – three times. But I don’t recall the first movement stretching to 27 minutes, which is what it clocks up under Mstislav Rostropovich’s marmoreal direction. Far too slow, surely, for Allegro non troppo, and in this particular case a barrier to sustained tension. Vengerov’s playing is warm and assured but oddly bland.

His first entry is more affectionate than assertive, though he’s capable of launching a swingeing attack (for instance at 6’07”). In the minor-key meditation at the movement’s heart (14’20”) he sounds uncomfortable with Rostropovich’s sleepy tempo and the climbing broken chords that signal the next big tutti (16’07”) are quite bereft of impact. The cadenza (by Vengerov himself) is well played but cannot compensate for what hasn’t already happened. Nor for what happens next, a Larghetto that is paced almost identically to the first movement, so no contrast there. The Larghetto’s second theme lacks inwardness and it’s only with the arrival of the finale that things begin to look up, though even there the small print is disproportionately emboldened. For most of the time this recording sounds like a cautious rehearsal, though I’m sure the intention was to achieve something serene and monumental. I get the drift, but not the effect. The Romances are again slow and a mite ponderous but the sound is uniformly excellent and so is the playing of the LSO.

Vengerov’s Beethoven Concerto is too much the proverbial ‘old head on young shoulders’. Maybe the ‘old head’ was Rostropovich’s and Vengerov went along with the flow out of justified respect for his venerable colleague. Those Israel performances with Davis worked rather better so maybe we should view this particular document as a ‘work-in-progress’. Then again, can we honestly expect a 30-year-old’s interpretation of this most aloof and Olympian of concertos to be anything more than that? If this is the coupling you want, and if vitality is a prerequisite alongside digital sound, then best stick with Zehetmair or Kremer – at least for the moment.