There’s great fascination in the way HK Gruber both resists and embraces his sources, grappling with the burden of being Austrian, born in Vienna (in 1943), and an ex-member of the Vienna Boys Choir into the bargain. Traditions are never more seductive or more disconcerting than in such contexts, and although at times it seems as if Gruber’s main aim is to send up everything and everyone, his music comes into its own when something more serious, and more complex, manages to break through.

The two violin concertos are the most engaging works here: the first turns a shadowy eroticism not a million miles from Berg or Korngold into a kaleidoscopic if rather protracted fantasia, while the second (a tribute to Gruber’s mentor Gottfried von Einem) is even more impressive, its neo-Baroque associations ducking and diving in all sorts of directions at once, yet avoiding the obvious – as any composition taking one of its cues from Berg’s Lyric Suite needs to do. Both concertos benefit from the personable solo playing of Katarina Andreasson, and from Gruber’s skill as a conductor shaping the intensely fluid rhythmic scenarios of these deceptively ingratiating scores.

Busking dates from 2007 and comes across as a rather sprawling vehicle for the ever-enterprising Håkan Hardenberger. To use banjo and accordion in support emphasises their relative reticence as sound sources and, although the kind of quasi-improvisatory high jinks implied by the title surface now and again, the risks of blandness aren’t completely avoided. Even with these reservations, however, this disc is a substantial and well-recorded addition to BIS’s Gruber series.