Carpenter is very much a Primrose man, which is just as well considering the heroic projection required for the Dvořák. Even with the cello original ringing in one’s ears, such is the charismatic intensity of Carpenter’s playing that one quickly adjusts and accepts this gripping performance on its own terms.

Carpenter’s big-boned, expansive tone and astute reworking of Joseph Vieland’s transcription [of the Dvořak] convinced me entirely on their own terms. Maltese composer Alexey Shor’s The Well-Tempered Chanson is great fun, riffing on popular Soviet songs of the 1920s with klezmer-ish abandon and echoing the folk-music antecedents of the Dvořák and Bartók works.