A gift for expressive cantabile must be in the Maisky blood.

This is no daddy-daughter vanity project; 24-year-old Lily Maisky is an impressive pianist in her own right with a felicitous musical rapport with her famous cellist father. He might count Martha Argerich as a long-standing duo partner, but in this selection of popular Spanish songs and dances – recorded live in concert – it’s hard to imagine a more fresh or sympathetic union.

Lily’s buoyant accompaniment perfectly matches Mischa’s bright, crisp pizzicatos in the third movement of Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole; both bring searing intensity to the sixth’s rapidly repeated notes. A gift for expressive cantabile must be in the Maisky blood, as heard in the phrasing of Granados’s Intermezzo and in his lilting Andaluza from the 12 Danzas españolas (the cellist’s own arrangement).

There is plenty of mystery in their fragrantly ornamented reading of Ravel’s Habanera, and it’s lovely to hear the full range of Mischa’s cello, especially the rich, resplendent nether end, in the stately Playera by Sarasate.

What I long for on this album though, after all that Mediterranean lyricism, is a lively, virtuosic contrast. Falla’s Danse espagnole No 1 from La Vida Breve is a good effort but the cellist’s uncharacteristically graceless intonation on fast trills and double stops falls flat. Finally the pyrotechnics come out in the same composer’s Ritual Fire Dance, the fierce cascading piano figurations and vigorously rhythmic cello showcasing the youthful zest of this familial duo. 

Two encores are offered: Pablo Casals’ The Song of the Birds and a playfully angular piece by Maisky’s compatriot Shchedrin, In the Style of Albèniz – nicely connecting the Russian and Spanish schools of playing.

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