For this recital, Lenka Torgersen and her colleagues bring together three 18th-century violinist-composers born in what is now the Czech Republic. Charles Burney, travelling through the region in the 1770s, remarked on its abject poverty but was struck by the intense musicality of its inhabitants. This combination may well explain why these three musicians all sought to further their careers abroad. Franti≈ek Benda, older brother of Georg, the pioneer of German stage music, eventually achieved a secure job at the court of Frederick the Great; his sonatas in B flat and C minor appear to me the outstanding works on the disc. His elegant, decorative style finds an admirable exponent in Torgersen, whose warm, mellow tone is combined with a totally convincing feeling for idiomatic ornamentation. (Benda, I know, left fully ornamented versions of some of his sonatas, and I’d love to learn how much of what we hear is invented by Torgerson.)

The A major Sonata, an adaptation for violin of a flute sonata by one of Benda’s composition teachers, is a suave, attractively melodious work. The sonatas by Jiránek and Gurecký are all pleasing but more conventional and restricted in their ideas. The Gurecký is quite showy – full of trills, which Torgersen executes with supreme ease and clarity. The Jiránek sonatas, with charming concluding movements in lighter style, seem to me quite close in style to the Haydn of the early string trios, though without Haydn’s touches of genius. Altogether, it’s a fascinating recital, with exceptional playing.