According to the publicity‚ the Black Box iClassics range combines world­class recording with worldwide content. The discs may play like normal audio CDs‚ but when placed in the CD drive of a home computer they’re designed to zoom us off via an encoded ‘hotlink’ to a dedicated website with extra content and links to related sites. At the time of writing‚ the home page for the present disc merely informs the curious that ‘Due to unprecedented levels of demand‚ our servers are having to be rebuilt’. Back to plain old audio I’m afraid‚ and on that level I cannot pretend that these lumbering performances rank with the finest on offer. The Rachmaninov collection begins with the Symphonic Dances‚ a surprising choice given that the work is by no means easy to bring off‚ and Wordsworth’s solid‚ generally dark­hued interpretation has several oddities which could pall on repetition. At the heart of a first movement which suffers some rhythmic instability‚ he encourages the strings to push forward with a blatant restatement of the nostalgic alto saxophone melody‚ and he has a strangely deliberate way with their emphatic semiquavers at the start of the finale. There isn’t much valedictory‚ end­of­an­era feeling in that movement’s central lento assai section‚ and‚ as is so often the case‚ the players seem rattled by the coda’s reprise of the Vespers setting of the Orthodox chant‚ ‘Blagosloven esi‚ Gospodi’‚ neither riding roughshod over Rachmaninov’s Poco meno mosso and racing away excitably‚ nor making a Musssorgskian virtue of the interruption. Whatever the composer meant‚ we can tell he wanted something more decisiveÊ–Êthere are plentiful marcato markings and he even writes ff molto sforzando in the pizzicato bars. Still‚ there are no half measures at the close: Wordsworth is obviously convinced that the Laisser vibrer indication should apply also to the final gong stroke and it gets a resounding thwack. I think I can guess why the concerto is placed second. The multi­talented Israela Margalit is nowadays most familiar to UK record buyers through her recordings of Anglo­American chamber repertoire with LSO principals. She is an accomplished but not hugely individual player‚ and her reading here‚ more stolid than subtle‚ receives only guarded support from her partners. Even with the finishing line in sight‚ she proceeds at a leisurely trot. Perhaps the multimedia aspect of this release (when the weblink becomes available) provides some of the missing sparkle. The Abbey Road production‚ seemingly dating from the early 1990s‚ has plenty of presence‚ and the price tag is modest.