Vadim Gluzman is a true virtuoso. His confident presence and brilliant, well schooled technique are allied to an especially deep, expressive tone. Angela Yoffe is well able to match his panache and, with a programme that avoids over-familiar encore pieces, this album should be a winner. And yet I found it difficult to shake off a sense of disappointment. The recital certainly gets off to a bad start with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s reworking of the Figaro aria – a piece that manages to exclude everything that’s elegant and witty in Rossini’s original. A performance of great verve only serves to exaggerate the unpleasant impression.

Elsewhere, Gluzman shows a tendency to resort to big tone and intense emotion. For Nigun this is just what’s required. In the Wieniawski, however (also, to some extent, in the Kreisler and the Halffter), intensity is overdone – many tender and poetic moments are missed, and the climaxes don’t stand out as they should. Yet Gluzman can play sweetly and gently, as he shows in “Träumerei”, or with an admirably light touch (in La Capricciosa). And towards the end of the recital his extravagant manner comes into its own, with Samuel Gardner’s declamatory Prelude, the Hollywood melodrama of Rota’s Improvviso and an account of Tzigane notable for its commanding virtuosity. A mixed bag, then, but there’s some stunning playing.