Anyone planning an all-Russian cello recital has a wonderfully rich menu to choose from. And with over 80 minutes of music on this disc, Jamal Aliyev and Anna Fedorova have certainly laid on a generous spread, including the sonatas by Shostakovich and Prokofiev as well as shorter works by Glazunov, Tchaikovsky and Shchedrin, plus Aliyev’s own virtuoso transcription of two (and not the pair you might expect) of Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances.

Aliyev plays with a pleasant if tightly focused tone and Fedorova is clearly on the same wavelength. There are countless little touches of imaginative colour – the balletic grace with which Aliyev unfolds the second subject of Prokofiev’s first movement, Fedorova strumming her piano like a gusli at the start of Glazunov’s Chant du ménéstrel, and the two of them whirling and shimmering together in Shostakovich’s Scherzo. Overall, though, their Shostakovich feels more controlled and less episodic than their Prokofiev. A bigger problem is the cool, resonant Champs Hill Music Room acoustic, in which Fedorova’s piano sounds glassy above the stave and Aliyev’s pizzicatos struggle to blossom.

In fact, a certain tonal coolness permeates this whole disc: no late-Romantic lushness here. That’s not entirely a bad thing. The pair find unexpected depths of melancholy in Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne and Pezzo capriccioso, and make the Shchedrin’s bravura Piazzolla-meets-Falla stylings glint like black ice. I did wonder if a slightly different programme order might have made for more satisfactory repeated listening. With the two sonatas placed together at the start of the disc, the remaining pieces felt like a series of encores, when, given the relationships between these composers, there’s surely a story to be told here. Thought-provoking rather than mouth-watering.