Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s recording of Peter Eötvös’s seven (2006) made a strong impression (Recording of the Year in the 2013 Awards) in company with two earlier Hungarian violin concertos. Now the Budapest Music Centre has issued a 2008 recording by the Japanese violinist who first played the work, alongside two other Eötvös concertos from 2005 and 2007 respectively. The earliest, CAP KO, is a ‘concerto for acoustic piano, keyboard and orchestra’. It’s dedicated to Bartók, and calling the fourth of its five movements ‘Bartók crosses the ocean’ suggests that Eötvös is linking it to his Bartók-acknowledging 2006 Sonata per sei for two pianos, three percussionists and sampler keyboard (Wergo, 8/14). Both scores offer exuberance and turbulence in abundance, offset by more reflective episodes, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard relishes the many opportunities CAP KO provides for virtuoso interplay between a conventional piano and its MIDI alter ego.

Levitation (2007) also has five sections, and its scoring for two clarinets, strings and accordion (not ‘harmonica’ as the translated notes state) facilitates the explicit allusion to Petrushka’s sinister ‘resurrection’ towards the end. Though it is rather more static in rhythmic character than Stravinsky’s early masterwork, the sparks begin to fly as the duetting clarinettists respond to the music’s almost cinematic vividness. Nevertheless, seven is probably the strongest piece of the three. As a ‘memorial for the Columbia astronauts’, its unusual design – four short cadenzas followed by a lament-like finale almost twice as long as the collected cadenzas, comes across powerfully in this fiercely committed performance, recorded with maximum intimacy and immediacy.