For what was billed as his final studio recording last year, David Starobin continued his survey of neglected composers with a disc devoted to Wenzeslaus Thomas Matiegka’s Six Guitar Sonatas, Op 31 (6/22). Now comes a ‘200th Birthday Bouquet’ to Giulio Regondi (1822 72), the Swiss-born musician who survived his status as a child prodigy to become an important composer of music for guitar and concertina. Starobin drew from his catalogue of released and unreleased recordings to devise this absorbing tribute.

Regondi was admired not just as a virtuoso – Fernando Sor dedicated a piece to the nine-year-old guitarist – but also as the creator of music of a lyrical and impassioned Romantic persuasion, including transcriptions of violin works. Starobin’s programme embraces compositions for guitar and his own transcriptions of Regondi études for concertina, the accordion-like instrument to which the composer devoted himself during the last decades of his life, mostly in London.

Whichever instrument is graced by Regondi’s creative touch, the musical results are alluring. His Nocturne Rêverie places the guitar in an operatic scene of soaring beauty and subtle nuances, all achieved to rapturous effect by Starobin. Regondi is in more dashing mood in pieces balancing poetry and pyrotechnics, such as the Introduction and Caprice, Op 23, and Aria varié No 1, Op 21.

Even in the études for guitar or concertina there is never a hint of the academic, especially in the shapely and urgent performances Starobin offers to salute a composer whose contributions continue to enchant players and listeners of this expressive repertoire.