Prokofiev had three goes at getting his first cello concerto right, and the last of these, the Symphony-Concerto (previously, and wrongly, known as Sinfonia concertante) was the nearest of his near misses. Even after those revisions, the large-scale shape was still problematic, and it would be idle to pretend that the piece comes off the page as strikingly as either of the violin concertos or the first three piano concertos. It remains an embarras of not always highest-grade richesses. Still, even on his less-than-gold-standard days, Prokofiev’s imaginative faculties outshine most others at their best, especially given a first-rate performance such as this one.

Christian Poltéra has all the warmth and variety of tone, plus technical address, the score demands. Superbly supported by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Anja Bihlmaier, he keeps Prokofiev’s invention on its toes where it can too easily sound slightly flat-footed.

Prokofiev was on safer ground within more traditional textbook confines, as in the late Cello Sonata. Not attempting to scale the epic heights of his First Violin Sonata, he mined an inexhaustible seam of lovable lyricism, placing it movingly in the context of darker thoughts. Poltéra and his finely attuned accompanist Juho Pohjonen are urgent almost to a fault, and I’m not sure I’d always want to hear the piece with this much nervous tension brought to bear. But the way they probe the shadows as well as the light is perceptive and perfectly valid. The Solo Sonata movement is persuasively played as to make one regret that Prokofiev did not live to complete the planned four-movement work.

There are plenty of distinguished versions of this repertoire on CD, but at bargain price none that I would prefer to this newcomer. Recorded balance and acoustic are first-rate.