Israeli-born, Grammy-nominated mandolinist Avi Avital’s repertoire extends from Baroque and Classical music written for mandolin through to adaptations and arrangements of solo, chamber and orchestral music far beyond that and new commissions too. Here he performs Bach’s concertos BWV1052 and BWV1056, originally conceived for violin and oboe respectively but extant only in Bach’s arrangements for harpsichord, as well as the equally popular A minor Violin Concerto and the E minor Flute Sonata. Avital writes that the mandolin ‘itself sounds like the harpsichord’; thus his transcriptions ‘fall somewhere between the harpsichord and violin versions’.

These really are polished, exciting performances by Avital and the Kammerakademie Potsdam that veer between bracing tension and an expressive fragility. In the slow movements Avital resists the temptation to use tremolo, opting to trust the listener to mentally extend the long notes and thereby become a genuine participant in the performance; the faster movements, such as the A minor Concerto’s finale, benefit from a crisp attack and sparkling articulation.

Avital is accompanied in the E minor Sonata by Ira Givol on cello and Ophira Zakai on theorbo, and it’s here perhaps that the mandolin really comes into its own as a truly cantabile instrument, the combination of filigree transparency and intimacy allowing Avital to take far more purely expressive risks over a broader emotional continuum. The Andante is worth the price of the disc alone.