The new-found popularity of Shostakovich’s greatest concerto has engendered a flood of state-of-the-art recordings but few if any are finer than this one. The piece once seemed to belong to David Oistrakh (Sony, 7/56R) but, since Maxim Vengerov’s hyper-intense recording (Warner, 2/95R), a younger generation has taken the work to its heart, sometimes experimenting as here with a less insistent mode of address. Lisa Batiashvili’s reflective, almost weightless approach in the opening Nocturne – quite different from Sarah Chang’s vibrato-rich traversal (EMI, 5/06) – is rendered more distinctive by the resonant acoustic of the empty Herkulessaal. For some listeners the suggestion of a lost soul will be enhanced. Orchestra and conductor might be said to be unidiomatic in their coolness and control but for all the lack of local colour the results are spellbinding, even when perfect intonation is momentarily compromised in the interests of heightened expressivity. After a Scherzo which gives the impression of living on the edge, the passacaglia is exceptionally poised and the cadenza more sheerly musical than usual. The finale whizzes to its end without undue triumphalism.

The makeweights are nicely calculated to give us a taster of the musical response of other significant figures trapped within and without the confines of the Soviet Russian empire in which the soloist herself spent her formative years. Batiashvili is persuasive in the mysterious V & V in which a taped fragment of Georgian funeral lament bookends the dreamlike atmospheric meanderings of soloist and string orchestra. While the well-nigh definitive account by Gidon Kremer (ECM, 8/05) couples additional Kancheli, just as Vengerov’s Shostakovich First Concerto now comes more logically paired with the composer’s Second, Lisa Batiashvili is by no means outshone. In what is her first project for the yellow label, someone has made the decision to play up her glamour and go heavy on the eye make-up, but her gleaming, focused tone and fierce musical intelligence need no makeover. Recommended.