Having impressed with his pairing of Dvořák and Martinů (7/21), Victor Julien-Laferrière turns to French concertos for what proves a pertinent and instructive coupling, not least in highlighting the intriguing similarities between pieces written almost half a century apart.

Likely the most-recorded among latter‑day cello concertos, Tout un monde lointain … (1970) finds Dutilleux at his stealthiest – not least in the first of its five continuous movements, ‘Énigme’, to whose refractory changes of mood Julien-Laferrière is as attentive as he is to the probing inwardness of ‘Regard’ and the plangent dialogue of ‘Houles’. Nor is he afraid of mining a deeper vein of expression than many in the shimmering vistas of ‘Miroirs’, before ‘Hymne’ brings this Baudelaire-inspired sequence to an energetic if ultimately equivocal conclusion.

For his second cello concerto (Celo having been recorded by Sonia-Wieder Atherton – Naïve, 9/03), Pascal Dusapin favours a single movement, which emerges not as distinct sections but rather as a cumulatively unfolding entity. The numerous possible meanings of its title, Outscape (2015), are reflected in the timbral and textural interplay of music where a corresponding emotional intensity gradually takes precedence. Even in the dramatic final stage, an interiorised quality remains foremost yet, as Julien-Laferrière renders it, there is never an absence of immediacy.

The benchmark version of the Dutilleux by Mstislav Rostropovich, alongside recent accounts from Christian Poltéra and Johannes Moser, favours the Lutosławski Concerto as coupling, making this new release of value even were Julien-Laferrière not so persuasive an advocate. With vibrant orchestral playing and sound of real vividness, it can be warmly recommended.