It’s a fine idea to make a programme from two such different works: the Kodály, expansive, with grand emotional gestures, the Britten with its series of compact pieces and an idiom that’s restrained, elusive, and searching. Henrik Dam Thomsen is a splendid player, technically assured, showing strong rapport with both the main works. (Tema-Sacher, from the last year of Britten’s life, lasts for just a minute and a half, but is surprisingly powerful.) Thomsen presents the Hungarian idioms in the Kodály like a native – he studied with János Starker – and makes the most of the character pieces in the Britten. The pizzicato Serenata is particularly effective, with its disturbing cross rhythms well emphasised.

So, if you like the programme the CD can be recommended, but Thomsen wouldn’t be my first choice either for Britten or Kodály. Sung-Won Yang shows a more charismatic presence in the Kodály, and the way he’s able to take the long view, creating a cumulative effect in each movement, makes for a highly compelling interpretation; with Thomsen one does start to wonder if some parts of the Sonata aren’t rather long-winded.

In the Britten, Thomsen is often a close rival to the brilliant Jean-Guihen Queyras – in the last two movements as well as in the Serenata. But Queyras’s characterisation is just that bit sharper, his sense of line more persuasive in the recurring Canto sections. And the fact that Thomsen takes more than five minutes longer to play the Suite is a symptom of a looser approach that may produce some beautiful moments but doesn’t give such a strong impression of the whole work.