On track: Recordings offer diamonds and pearls

By WILLIAM DART

It is some feat to walk away with top prize at the Sibelius International Violin Competition when you're 15, as Sergey Khachatryan did in 2000. Now, four years on, the young Armenian's first concerto album confirms a major talent.

His Sibelius Concerto alone would sell the disc, with Khachatryan's shimmering vibrato and unswerving commitment creating the equivalent of a Finnish Valhalla. His unruffled technical control in the Finale is simply awe-inducing.

As fine as he is, Khachatryan doesn't deserve all the praise; the Sinfonia Varsovia, under Emmanuel Krivine, bring along an impressive sound palette, running from full-blooded oils to delicate watercolours - the exquisite voicing in the opening bars of the Adagio being just one instance of the latter. All of which, needless to say, is perfectly caught in an exemplary Naïve recording.

Khachatryan's Armenian heritage makes Khachaturian's 1940 Violin Concerto ring with a truth that sometimes eludes it.

In Western concert halls, this robust showpiece has been known to make sensitive souls shudder but this gripping and totally unapologetic reading may well convert a few former cynics.

Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin is a venerable 43 and has rescued enough "forgotten music" to warrant a Unesco citation, with CDs devoted to the likes of Leo Ornstein, Karol Szymanowski and, most obscure of all, the Russian modernist Nikolai Roslavets. Indeed, his new Hyperion disc combining Shostakovich's two concertos with the less well-known Shchedrin Second may seem comparatively mainstream.

The Shostakovich concertos are audience-friendly concert fare these days, although one would be hard pressed to better these performances. The BBC Scottish Symphony under Andrew Litton is never less than compelling while Hamelin is a revelation. When the music glitters, he deals in diamonds; in the slow movement of the Second Concerto, an idyll which might well have melted Stalin's heart had Josef lived to hear it, he lays out pearls of the rarest lustre.

Rodion Shchedrin's 1966 Second Piano Concerto is a curiosity, mainly for its Finale, which jump-cuts from jazz trio to orchestral writing with unsettling effect. It is all good fun, brilliantly delivered, although perhaps a little over-fraught for some tastes, especially after the comparatively well-mannered Shostakovich.

* Sergey Khachatryan, Violin Concertos (Naïve V 4959, through Elite Imports); Marc-Andre Hamelin, Shostakovich & Shchedrin Piano Concertos (Hyperion CDA 7425, through Ode Records)