There have been several excellent new accounts of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto recently, and in many ways Jamie Walton’s is not inferior to them. He clearly has a fine grasp of the piece, both in its details and its broader flow. The main problem is that the recording sounds hollow and ill-balanced. I say that partly because I find it hard to believe that the conductor would have made certain decisions had he known what the result would be. In the finale’s opening cadenzas, for example, the side drum and tambourine are needlessly emasculated, as though fearful of drowning out the main lines (on horns and solo cello respectively). So the element of confrontation is lost, and with it the entire dramatic structure and the poignancy of its large-scale contrasts. I would say that Walton slightly misses the folk-like sadness of certain passages, but it may be simply that I find the recorded sound so off-putting.

While admiring the integrity Walton brings to the Britten Cello Symphony – one of his most rebarbative and therefore least recorded major works – here too I could never quite settle with the sound quality, whatever volume level I chose and whatever system I played it back on.