In the normal run of things I would have well and truly castigated any CD manufacturer who dared put out a full-price programme lasting less than 50 minutes, but in this case the combination of three fairly sombre viola pieces by major composers in exile hits the spot exactly: one extra work would have thrown the whole project out of kilter. Vladimír Bukac is violist of the Talich Quartet and it's interesting that rather than opt for the familiar Tibor Serly completion of Bartók's Viola Concerto, he appears to have used Peter Bartók's revision (one of several that have appeared since the “original” was published in 1950). If you want to check Serly against Bartók fils, there's a giveaway in the first two bars where Serly answers the solo viola on pizzicato cellos and basses, and Peter Bartók opts for timpani. Thereafter differences between the two are both plentiful (many passages are completely rescored) and musically fascinating, the newer version claiming a far wider range of colours than its spartan predecessor (chapter and verse on the subject can be found in Donald Maurice's Bartók's Viola Concerto: The Remarkable Story of his Swansong; OUP: 2003).

Bukac offers a warm, emotionally committed performance of the Bartók, flexible, dusky-brown in tone and sensitively accompanied by Válek and the Czech Radio Symphony. The Hindemith Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra was famously written at breakneck speed while the viola player-composer was on a performing visit to London. George V had died the previous day, which meant that Hindemith's relatively upbeat Schwanendreher Concerto was deemed inappropriate for the occasion and the new piece, all seven minutes of it, was played in its place. Brief though it is, Hindemith's Trauermusik is one of his loveliest works, the poignant two-minute finale based on Bach's last chorale. Again, the performance radiates warmth but for me the highlight of this excellent disc is the Rhapsodie-concerto that Martinu wrote to a commission from the principal viola of George Szell's Cleveland Orchestra (Szell himself conducted the premiere in 1953). Martinu came up with a work cast in his most lyrical vein, music that while deeply nostalgic and mostly slow-moving does allow for a dash of dancing in the second of its two movements. Bukac's rivals include the excellent Josef Suk (Supraphon, 11/95) but this new recording is just as persuasive and very well engineered. Again the orchestral playing is idiomatic and the conducting sympathetic and intelligent.