Born only five years apart (Shostakovich in 1908 and Britten in 1913), the two composers had little in common. Shostakovich’s father was a provincial functionary in the dying days of Czarist Russia, Britten the shining scion of a self-confident post Edwardian haute bourgeoisie family. In their later years, however, they developed an almost three-way symbiotic relationship, with the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich as a creative conduit.

The works featured on this well-filled CD come from each end of Shostakovich’s career: the Cello Sonata in 1934 and the Second Cello Concerto in 1966. Both Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata and his First Cello Concerto (completed 1959) are relatively direct in their communicative power but the Second is considerably more cryptic, as Kanneh-Mason himself describes it. 

To me, listening to it for the first time, that’s putting it mildly. Having recently reviewed a number of Shostakovich’s string quartets, most of them exude a similarly grim inscrutability about what the composer is actually trying to convey and I find it amazing that such a young artist (Kanneh-Mason is 26) can penetrate such emotionally uncomfortable music, which seems neither...