The vitality of sound captured here by Linn is possibly the most attractive aspect of this album. It perfectly suits the frenetic glory that is the playing of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha. Just when you think it can’t be more colourful or charismatic, Kadesha brings more joy, more physicality that is somehow simultaneously slapdash and highly finessed. He’s a violinist who you just know will be good fun at a party.

The repertoire almost fits Kadesha’s character too comfortably. In the second movement of the fiendishly difficult Vivaldi Concerto Il Grosso Mogul, it’s possible to hear his Albanian and Greek heritage usurping the Italian redhead: bends and inflections that breathe warm late-night air, made jagged with the folky bowings. The performances teem with humour: I couldn’t help but smile when Paganini makes a cameo, just at the end of the third movement’s cadenza.

But it’s not all flicks and tricks. The centrepiece of the album is a new concerto, Tyche, by Giovanni Sollima. The title refers to the Ancient Greek goddess of luck and fate, and the work reflects on ‘the ambivalence of life itself’, though I can’t imagine that’s the reason behind the inconsistent quality of its movements. I adore the doleful episodes of the second-movement Capriccio: Kadesha glows against the smoky strings of the ensemble, but the way the music seems to lose control of its furiousness touches on cliché. The gem of the concerto is its fourth movement, ‘Rite’. Kadesha’s breath, both literal and of his wispy bow figurations, streaks the pre-liminal stage with anticipation (the CHAARTS Chamber Artists here are wondrous, too, spellbound but seductive). And then body percussion – is this Luca Staffelbach? – and the dance becomes prickly, the violinist possessed. It’s wonderfully scary music that, in its references to the Totentanz and violinist virtuosity traded with the devil, pairs excellently with the Stravinsky. The quasi-neoclassicism of the final movement, ‘Metamorphosis’, is then particularly clever in how it points to both the Stravinsky and the Vivaldi. Kadesha dances and trills with such charisma, sitting wonderfully in the raucous mix. The CHAARTS Chamber Artists have bountifully improved since I last reviewed them back in September 2022. Kadesha has brought out a vigour and dynamism in them that is practically beyond recognition.