As with Bach’s St Matthew Passion, this disc presents an unfamiliar early version of a known masterpiece.
Prokofiev wrote his Cello Concerto in the 1930s, but it failed to win favour ('grunting and scraping' complained the Soviet authorities) and only resurfaced when it was reworked much later as the Symphony-Concerto.
Isserlis plays the original Cello Concerto and bravely offers it in a wholehearted, spine-tingling live performance with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1 is cogent, if more muted.