Steven Isserlis’s discs for RCA covering virtually all the music Saint-Saëns wrote for cello remain benchmarks but, shrewdly, talented young British cellist Jamie Walton offers a coupling that in many ways is more attractive than any of the individual Isserlis discs: he includes both concertos and the first of the sonatas, with the most popular of all Saint-Saëns works, ‘Le cygne’ from the Carnival of the Animals, as a bonus.

It says much for Walton that his readings stand the closest comparison with those of Isserlis, both in expressive imagination and in virtuosity. Helped by rather fuller recording, the Walton performances are even a shade warmer, notably in slow movements, and though the cello is balanced well forward, the playing of the Philharmonia under Alex Briger still makes its impact (the sharply rhythmic opening of the Second Concerto, for example). That work may not have the attractions of the more popular First, largely because the thematic material is not so memorable, but it remains powerful, with its distinctive cyclic structure linking movements. In the new version the thrust and brilliance of the closing pages are outstanding, with greater clarity of detail than on RCA.

The First Cello Sonata has a striking, vigorous opening and in every way is a work of comparable stature, employing the cyclic form that Saint-Saëns regularly favoured. Daniel Grimwood proves an excellent partner for Walton, in his way as imaginative as Pascal Devoyon with Isserlis, and the new version gains in the extra brightness and forwardness of the sound. An excellent disc, a credit to the enterprise of the Quartz label.