Christian Tetzlaff may be the only front-ranking soloist to have recorded all Sibelius’s output for violin and orchestra but then he has also set down the Voces intimae string quartet with his own eponymous quartet. No surprise then to discover him playing Shostakovich’s chamber works in concert and on disc, and electing now to record both Shostakovich concertos where many latter-day rivals look no further than the First. In scores written expressly for the great David Oistrakh, it is perhaps inevitable that older hands tend to seek out performances embracing comparable emotional authenticity and a big tone. That said, the best post-Soviet champions are already taking this music in new directions.

Tetzlaff provides a different kind of experience from that of Russian-trained practitioners like Maxim Vengerov. Using a modern instrument by Stefan-Peter Greiner, plus a brace of bows, the German virtuoso makes the piece his own in leaner, anti-rhetorical fashion. While the opening ‘Nocturne’ of the First Concerto moves a tad more swiftly than some will like, his less insistent vibrato inhabits a dreamy moonlit landscape, rather than one freighted with personal memories of life behind the Iron Curtain. Harp, celesta and subterranean tam-tam strokes are plainly audible. In the Scherzo his normally immaculate tonal profile is deliberately roughed up in an attempt to create the requisite sense of strain. Nor is there any lack of intensity in the aspiring/oppressive ‘Passacaglia’ where John Storgårds and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra are more linear or analytical partners than, say, Rostropovich’s LSO for Vengerov. The finale doesn’t exactly go like the wind until its closing stages. Still, there’s nothing overly cerebral about it. The sound recording, made in the new Helsinki Music Centre, admits plenty of light even with the soloist discreetly spotlit.

The Second Concerto is at least as persuasive, its slow movement bringing some breathtaking shafts of radiance amid the prevailing gloom. Warmly recommended as a supplement to brawnier, more oppressive readings.