FREDDY KEMPF
Prokofiev

PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD
Debussy

CLINTON/LOREN/GORBACHEV
Peter and the Wolf

“HERE I AM, I am a torero”: these are Maxim Vengerov’s words, capturing what it feels to make his first entry in Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. It is a good image. The cape’s bravura swirl, the blazing sun, the crowd’s roar: you can picture them all in Vengerov’s flourish on the opening track of his latest CD, with Antonio Pappano and the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI Classics 5 57593 2).

In the booklet Vengerov advises the purchaser that he is playing a 1727 Stradivarius, owned at the end of that century by the violinist Rudolphe Kreutzer, of “Kreutzer” Sonata fame. But Vengerov, you sense, would make a richly textured sound even if he were playing a rusty nail. The works on this all-French disc — Ravel’s Tzigane and Saint-Saëns’s third concerto conclude the programme — make a point of virtuoso thrills, and Vengerov faces every challenge with an agility and splendour of tone that push him ahead of most other violinists on earth.

Yet along with the fireworks he also gives us the still small voice. Listen to the beseeching lento section in the middle of Lalo’s rondo finale. In the Saint-Saëns, feast yourself in the slow movement’s coda on the string harmonics, weirdly doubled with the clarinet two octaves below; or the finale’s calmer phases, spreading balm without ever curdling or turning cute. Vengerov’s sweetness never cloys: there is always an edge somewhere, some fleck of spice.

Treasure these quieter moments. For a problem attends Vengerov’s glories. The recording tends towards the fierce and brings the orchestra up close, loud and Tigger-ish. Pappano’s dramatic gifts find happy material, particularly in Lalo’s concerto in disguise, but an acoustic that makes the Philharmonia breathe down our necks is not the best channel for either orchestra or conductor. Still, you can always address the volume knob. And no one should be without the CD’s Tzigane. Ravel’s gypsy rhapsody is not the composer’s greatest piece, but Vengerov spins through it so brilliantly that even this sceptical listener was carried away.

More fireworks arrive on BIS-CD-1260, when the young British pianist Freddy Kempf brings a Yahama to near collapse with a Prokofiev recital, including the sixth and seventh sonatas, perhaps the most popular. The recording was made in Stockholm two years ago. Kempf was then 24, and his impetuous dash finds a perfect outlet in student works like the romantic little sonata of 1909 and the 1912 Toccata, a better sign of the Prokofiev to come.

For the disc’s major works we jump to the mature composer of the 1940s. Pounding fingers are now one requirement among many; you also need to dance, to sigh, negotiate waltz steps and rapid changes of mood. Kempf combines sensibility with technical bravura. He has light fingers when needed: a specially lovely romping touch irradiates the Sixth’s allegretto.

The only sizeable disappointment arrives where you least expect it, in the seventh sonata’s precipitato finale — music that should hurtle like a runaway train. Oddly, Kempf takes exactly the same time as that legendary pounder Glenn Gould (three minutes, 21 seconds), yet Kempf’s less demonstrative accents suggest a slower performance. No serious matter: this is a very enjoyable disc, well recorded. The piano seems to have survived.

The first track of Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s Debussy recital (Warner Classics 8573 83940-2) opens on to a different world. Light glints on the surface of water, caught in rolling waves of figurations. We are listening to Reflets dans l’eau from the first book of Images. The disc then proceeds through the other pictures — bells, goldfish, a moon descending on “the temple that was” — to the Etudes of 1915-16: remarkable, adventurous pieces masquerading as technical exercises.

Like Vengerov and Kempf, Aimard is in no need of strengthening his technique. The challenge lies more in the technique’s application, the layers of feeling evoked. In the Etudes, Debussy had no pictures in mind, but Aimard’s acute sensitivity to texture and form conjures up the most vivid aural ballets. Three years ago Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s excellent version arrived on Decca to wipe out most current competition. Aimard’s is not streets ahead, but a slightly clearer acoustic and a dab more poetry certainly nudge him forward.

Over now to three more virtuoso artistes: Bill Clinton, Sophia Loren, and Mikhail Gorbachev. On Pentatone Classics 5186 011 their instrument is their own voices. Loren reads Peter and the Wolf with an old pro’s skill, never pressing too hard. Clinton, less at home, wraps his Arkansas vowels around Jean-Pascal Beintus’s Wolf Tracks, a new composition in praise of a wolf, a boy and the harmony of humans and nature. Gorbachev, translator at hand, acts as master of ceremonies. Wolf Tracks glides by pleasantly; the Russian National Orchestra and Kent Nagano play like angels; for those with SACD players there is surround sound, and royalties go to worthy causes. I came to poke fun, but really, it’s a sweet disc.