Like his teacher Yehudi Menuhin before him, the artist formerly known as "Nige" proves to be an uncommonly dab performer on the viola. He certainly has the full measure of the 26-year-old Walton's astonishingly mature concerto (unquestionably the finest of the composer's three), penetrating to its bitter-sweet core with devastating emotional candour. Similarly, Kennedy's bitingly intense reading of the yearningly lyrical Violin Concerto earns the warmest plaudits in its characterful involvement and edge-of-seat spontaneity.

A very light but very lovely disc of mid-twentieth century violin concertos, this 1996 recording by Joshua Bell with David Zinman directing the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra coupling the concertos of Samuel Barber and William Walton along with Baal Shem, the concerto-in-all-but-in-name by Ernest Bloch, may be for younger listeners a first choice among digital recordings.

For a single-package introduction to the music of William Walton, it would be hard to do better than this two-disc set from EMI. Not only is the selection impeccable (including the First Symphony, Belshazzar's Feast, the violin and viola concertos, plus the Partita, for orchestra), but the performances, with the composer conducting, are, for all intents and purposes, definitive.

The viola is no longer the Cinderella of string instruments, thanks to such composers as Hindemith, Schnittke, Britten and Berio, but it was Walton who, in 1927, composed the first significant work for the viola since Berlioz’s Harold in Italy of 1834. Max Bruch also wrote for it; like Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin/viola duo, he composed a concerto for viola and clarinet in 1911, with an alternative version substituting violin for clarinet. A short Romance had appeared in 1885, while Kol nidrei for cello also had a version for viola. All these works appear on this excellent disc and highlight the instrument’s strengths and weaknesses in the capable hands of Bashmet, currently one of its greatest exponents.