Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today’s public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument’s history with a flamboyant programme featuring music by Tertis’s friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvellous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

When western audiences discovered the music of Nikolai Kapustin, they were truly shocked: Who was this Soviet (!) composer, whose music sounded more like an Oscar Peterson improvisation than anything else – but who wrote detailed scores, black with notes? As we discover more and more of his music (and there’s so much more yet to discover), a very distinct, always wholly charming voice emerges, whether in a freewheeling outright-jazzy work like his Concerto for 2 Pianos and Percussion, the more symphonic Fifth Piano Concerto, or the frisky Sinfonietta which transports us into a smoky 1940s bar in Manhattan.

Just do it: That was the motto when Simon Höfele and Frank Dupree decided to devote themselves to a red hot iron. They are hardly allowed to really live out their repertoire: the gulf between classical and jazz is still too big, the prejudices too insurmountable, the musical approach too different. They did it anyway and, together with close musical friends, put together an album that doesn't want to show any opposites, but rather creates musical connections and puts people in a good mood.

Pianist Frank Dupree, whose name looks American, is actually a German pianist who was initially trained as a jazz percussionist. That is more important than you might realize because this CD features the music of Nikolai Kapustin, the late Russian composer whose compositions are fully saturated with jazz feeling and swing. Interestingly, Dupree has also made a recording of music by avant-garde composer Peter Eötvös for the Genuin label, so his interest in modern classical music seems to be fairly wide.