A shrewd and compelling coupling for a debut album in the solo spot. Theodor Lyngstad is the principal cello of the Copenhagen Philharmonic and has been since he was appointed at the age of 25. And because a big part of the character of these two concertos is that sense of integration, of the cello as an obbligato instrument, he somehow belongs, relating to his orchestral colleagues (conducted here by Eva Ollikainen) with an ease and familiarity of a chamber music partner.

Both pieces unfold in three continuous movements bridged by cadenzas, both pieces have an improvisatory quality, and both pieces come from a dark place. The rarely heard Kabalevsky is surprising in that regard. The folksy upbeat composer we know from a small selection of popular works is nowhere here. The sombre sostenuto of the opening with its stark pizzicato punctuation is at once edgy and intense. The fast music – keenly articulated by Lyngstad – is fraught, eventually morphing into the angry Presto marcato of the middle movement. The plangent saxophone colour is a Kabalevsky fingerprint but in this context just that. We wait a long time for the wistful andante of the final movement – where soloist and oboist shine – but it’s hard to shake off the tribulations of the second movement. This is a very different Kabalevsky from he who played the Soviet establishment so well.

The Schumann is core repertoire, of course, but again there is no escaping the inner conflict or the yearning. One notices more here that Lyngstad’s musical personality isn’t as big or as demonstrative as some of the legendary cellists that have addressed the piece – but what he does bring to it is an honesty and grace and, more importantly, an intimacy in the fleeting slow movement that is most touching.

But it’s the Kabalevsky that is the big selling point for the Norwegian cellist, and unlikely though these works are as bedfellows, there is definitely method in Lyngstad’s madness.