Music is nothing without some degree of generic and geographical cross fertilisation and the work of Airat Ichmouratov is one example among many. Escaping the disorderly Russian Federation of Boris Yeltsin in the late 1990s, the clarinettist turned conductor and composer, followed by his string-playing wife, Elvira Misbakhova, fetched up in Canada, where they busked on the streets of Montreal before co-founding the klezmer-fusion band Kleztory in 2000. No matter that the couple were born in the mainly Islamic Republic of Tatarstan. In 2004 the group played on Chandos’s ‘Klezmer’ album, one of several anthologies from I Musici de Montréal touching base in more or less exotic locales. The conductor was Yuli Turovsky, whose subsequent encouragement of Ichmouratov’s creative endeavours is reflected in the dedication of the first piece on the new disc. However, the orchestra featured is the former Minsk Chamber Orchestra, a product of the Soviet era.

These incidentals prove more intriguing than the music itself. The Concerto grosso No 1, Op 28, is vaguely neo-Baroque fare, fusing Russian and Jewish elements – think Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes – with the harmless, harmonically inert bustle characteristic of much contemporary film music. The central Adagio is underpinned by Prokofiev’s patented tick-tock accompaniment, the finale nothing if not upbeat. The Three Romances for viola and orchestra, Op 22, mine a more wistful seam. Only the more recent single-movement Octet in G minor, Op 56 (inspired by Letter from an Unknown Woman – the Stefan Zweig novella apparently rather than the Max Ophuls film version) demonstrates serious compositional ambition. Here there is greater ability to think in paragraphs and a leaner style of melodic emoting, supplementing the usual Romantic Russians with elements recalling Korngold, Schoenberg and Strauss.

The recorded sound is vivid, albeit shallower than that associated with Chandos productions on home turf. Might some of this material have Classic FM appeal? The record company must think so, as there is more to come.