Apart from Taras Bulba, one of Janáček’s more straightforward works and one given a strong and eloquent performance here, Vol 2 of Chandos’s selection consists of some of his most unusual inventions. Jealousy, planned as an introduction to Jenůfa, was abandoned early on, surely with good reason, in favour of the inexorable trundling of the mill-wheel as the curtain goes up, though it is a vivid expression of an emotion that charges the opera. Another ‘pre-opera’ work was the Violin Concerto, rescued by Miloš Štědroň and Leoš Faltus from sketches for an overture to From the House of the Dead but not performed until 1988. However, the music’s evolution is uncertain and Janáček seems to have been taking it in another direction: John Tyrrell, whose very full notes are invaluable in helping us pick our way through the labyrinthine provenance of these works, even thinks that its strange subtitle, The Wandering of a Little Soul, may be connected to a death in the General Strike during Janáček’s visit to London. It is not, despite James Ehnes’s touching performance, such a strong piece as The Danube, an impressive work (with Susanna Andersson singing the haunting vocalise in the third movement) which Janáček left unfinished.

The two Ballads, while no less original, are as enigmatic, fascinating in their use of expression through the eccentric instrumental textures which Janáček increasingly came to explore in his last years. The Fiddler’s Child, based on one of those macabre tales which stalk through Central European folklore, may well have been motivated by the deaths of Janáček’s own two children and is haunted by the sound of four-part violas, sometimes muted and blended with a bass clarinet. Leader Milina Mandozzi does well to show the way through this mysterious, powerful work. The Ballad of Blaník, based on another popular tale (also used by Smetana), the one about the hidden king who will one day rise from slumber to lead his people in their hour of need to victory over the tyrant, also draws on the combination of violas and clarinets but is in general more traditionally textured. These must be difficult works to prepare and indeed to record; both playing and recording are vividly managed.