I love the Khachaturian Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and am not nearly as familiar with the Barber Concerto. Having listened to this new recording from Deutsche Grammophon featuring Mikhail Simonyan as soloist, I don’t think I could image two concertos more dissimilar. Simonyan hails from Russian/Armenian ancestry but studied at Curtis in America for many years. This celebrates the two sides of his life, or as the name suggests his ‘two souls’. I like the contrast of the two works, after the beast of the Khachaturian Concerto we have the mostly lyrical Barber. The playing is decided and strong. I will be very interested to see where Simonyan goes next musically.