Tchaikovsky was born in 1925 and his compositional career spanned the second half of the 20th century. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, a pupil of Shebalin, Shostakovich and Myaskovsky, and his teachers certainly left their mark. The Piano Trio which opens the disc was composed in 1953 and sounds like a pale Shostakovich imitation at times, lacking some of the intensity or sarcasm that laced his teacher’s scores. If not quite the ‘path-breaking’ composer claimed in Louis Blois’s booklet notes, Tchaikovsky’s music is still worth a listen.

The Piano Trio is given a persuasive performance by Haik Kazazyan, Christopher Marwood and Olga Solovieva. We’re thrown straight into a feisty toccata, an exhilarating opening which largely leaves Tchaikovsky with nowhere to go. The piano suffers a little in terms of recorded balance here, strings dominating the sound picture. Kazazyan moulds the violin line of the lengthy Aria most sensitively. The finale – a set of variations – meanders but has its lively moments, with tight ensemble-playing impressing.

Marwood is firmly at the centre of this disc, performing the Cello Sonata (1957) and the Solo Cello Suite (1946), both works premiered by the great Mstislav Rostropovich. Like the Piano Trio, the Sonata (dedicated to Mieczysaw Weinberg) starts off in impulsive mood. Marwood is swifter than Rostropovich’s own recording (with the composer at the piano) and his polished tone gives the central Largo a sense of nobility. Marwood makes neat work of the busy five-movement Solo Suite, introverted in the melancholy Aria, nimbly leaping between octaves in the Capriccio. An interesting byway of 20th-century Soviet chamber music.