It’s a brave cellist who chooses Kodály’s Solo Sonata for his debut recording. Aside from its high technical demands, it calls for great stamina and the ability to project and sustain the composer’s grand, expansive designs. James Barralet doesn’t quite share the supreme assurance and the glossy, resonant tone of Sung-Won Yang (EMI, 2/03) but his performance is more sensitive and intimate, and his more “stringy” sound perfectly suits the music’s folk character. It’s a deeply idiomatic performance, as we can hear in the declamatory style of the opening and the delicate filigree of the second movement’s ornaments. The fine-sounding recording catches some loud intakes of breath, demonstrating Barralet’s intense concentration but still somewhat disturbing.

I was pleased to get to know the Roxburgh Partita, written in 1970. The first of its four short movements is directed to be played “as if improvised” and the whole work has a spontaneous character, animated by nervous energy. The writing for cello is inventively colourful and Barralet relishes its dramatic possibilities.

His performance of the Britten makes an interesting comparison with the fine 1998 account by Jean-Guihen Queyras (Harmonia Mundi, 1/99). Where Queyras stresses beauty and continuity, Barralet, at generally slower speeds, concentrates on expressive nuance, imparting a more meditative air. The disc includes an extra track – the original version of the Suite’s Introduzione – more elaborate and dissonant than the published text with its lonely cantilena above the tolling plucked C string. Britten’s second thought is certainly to be preferred but it’s fascinating to hear how he reached it.