Having impressed with his discs devoted to Honegger, Martin and Schoeck, Christian Poltéra turns to concertos stamped with the indelible presence of Rostropovich, for whom they were written almost four decades ago and where similarities are deftly played off against differences over tightly integrated single movements. Unity in the Dutilleux comes from a subtle eliding between animation and suspense, ensuring a forward movement in spite of the elusiveness of its material – something Poltéra realises in full measure, aided by an orchestral response that brings a rhetorical grandeur to those chordal sequences closing the second and fourth sections; the only slight failing being a conclusion that verges on the inconsequential. In the Lutosawski, interplay between an initially impassive soloist and an increasingly agitated orchestra unifies one of his most lucid formal designs – Poltéra as convincing in the “tit for tat” of the earlier exchanges as in the rapt intensity of the “cantilena” and the explosive confrontation of the final section, in which he conveys a sense of accord which is the more gratifying for being so hard-won.

The couplings are these two composers’ tributes to conductor and philanthropist Paul Sacher on his 90th birthday. Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes fashions an exquisite sonatina out of a rendering of the dedicatee’s name, which Lutosawski’s Sacher Variation takes as the basis for a study in “less is more”. Spacious and well defined SACD sound, along with authoritative notes, enhance a disc that, without supplanting the Rostropovich, is a more than worthy successor.