This is Gautier Capuçon’s second album of ‘lollipops’. The first, elliptically entitled ‘Intuition’ (2/18), deftly balanced lyricism with flash and was anchored by two substantial works: Giovanni Sollima’s Violoncelles, vibrez! and Piazzolla’s Le grand tango. This new offering, by contrast, is inordinately skewed towards the succinct and songful. Indeed, the only truly showy number is Monti’s miniature Hungarian rhapsody Csárdás, which Capuçon plays with style and élan; the rest is more or less in the ‘Best Adagios’ vein. That said, much of the programme is exquisitely played. Capuçon finds a surprisingly wide range of feeling in Tchaikovsky’s ‘Valse sentimentale’, for instance, capturing the yearning quality of the Song to the Moon from Dvořák’s Rusalka, and he plumbs the melancholy depths of Piazzolla’s Oblivion, supported handsomely by a dark pillow of strings.

The Piazzolla is one of Jérôme Ducros’s most effective arrangements, along with Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’ and Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 – both delicately scored. I’m less enthused with his reworking of the Albinoni-Giazotto Adagio, as I find the addition of woodwind parts jarring, while some of the other pieces, such as Fauré’s Pavane and Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ variation, simply don’t work that well with the solo cello constantly in the foreground. I’ll admit, too, that I’m put off by most of Capuçon’s excursion into pop territory, as the arrangements, with their Hollywood-style climaxes, accentuate the saccharine – try, say, Monnot’s Hymne à l’amour or Chen’s You and Me – or, as with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, violate the music’s folk-like directness. The Einaudi, Nyman and Max Richter (what falls into the ‘Modern Classical’ category in pop terminology) are more successful, especially as they’re played with such passionate sincerity.

After such a heavy meal of soulful fare, it’s downright strange to be given Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer for dessert, and especially in such a jittery, impatient performance that sidesteps the music’s underlying lyricism.