When the young French cellist Edgar Moreau released his debut album last year (6/14) it was with a relatively soft tread, his programme of concert miniatures for cello and piano drawing our attention to his mature tone, romantic leanings, athletic prowess and expressive qualities but without presenting anything with which to frighten the horses. By contrast, ‘Giovincello’ (an affectionate Italian term for ‘young man’) is something of an explosion.

The centrepiece is a warmly buoyant reading of Haydn’s Concerto in C which contains surprises that sound rebelliously deviant on paper but which somehow work bewitchingly well in these musicians’ hands: what could only be described as the ‘Baroque ing’ of the second movement’s opening theme, for instance, reassigning its note values so as to transform previously equally weighted notes into mere ornamentations of others. It would be interesting to know whether this idea came from conductor Riccardo Minasi or from Moreau himself, and no doubt it’ll be too libertarian for some. However, although I’d be leading the protest if it were to start a trend, here it’s unexpectedly charming. Then there’s the tempo of the third movement, which is taken at such a hold-on-to-your-hats pace that it leaves even Jean-Guihen Queyras’s 2004 recording, probably the previous record-holder for speed, in its dust. It makes for a slightly pushed-sounding continuo line; but the strings of Il Pomo d’Oro remain tightly together through this group virtuoso challenge, while Moreau himself has plenty of capacity left for expression, combined with an accuracy of intonation that’s frankly exhilarating.

In fact, Moreau’s ‘giovincello’ qualities are what this disc is all about. The balance is engineered so as to place his singing, silkily intense and muscular tone absolutely in the foreground, along with the sound of his fingerboard and his gasps of exertion. Equally noticeable is the way in which he meets the orchestra’s exceptionally crisp period attack with a subtle romanticism typified by elegant little portamentos; evidently Moreau is playing according to how he feels the music, rather than being tied to concerns of ‘authenticity’.

The disc feels slightly one of two halves thanks to the all-Italian programme that follows the Haydn, but the second half is just as enjoyable; the Vivaldi’s dramatic final movement is the perfect vehicle for Moreau’s en pointe virtuosity, while the aria-like central movement of Graziani’s concerto leaves us in no doubt as to his ability to sculpt extended phrases with poetry and sense of line.