Béla Bartók once said of his friend Zoltán Kodály that ‘his true nature is contemplative’. Did JoAnn Falletta have that nugget in mind while quite literally ‘controlling’ these sturdy performances? Maybe not, but still we sense Kodály’s tendency to recoil from expressive overload – where his friend Bartók might have gone the whole hog – in the performances as much as in the works themselves.

The obvious point of comparison is Kodály’s Concerto for Orchestra, which predates Bartók’s by four years and like that piece was written for an exuberant American orchestra (though, in 1940, the Chicago Symphony was yet to meet Fritz Reiner). The piece’s heart is its central essay in soulful introspection induced by a string sextet, played gorgeously and undemonstratively here. But I’m not sure Naxos’s deep sound picture capitalises on the jungle baroque machinations with which the piece begins and picks up again later, especially as Falletta does well to keep things structurally light by controlling momentum and leaning gently into junctions.

Of similar architectural interest are Kodály’s Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song, written the year before. Again, the performance is marked out by its sense of care: the counterpoint of rhythms in Variations 6 and 7, the delicate sparkle in Var 10 and the steady climb to the theme’s final emancipation that ratchets up from Var 12 to the end are all well plotted here. The big moments come off fine but the journeys thereto enchant more.

Kodály’s well-known dance sets speak more plainly, and we hear how good some of the Buffalo players are (notably the solo clarinet). Falletta is less indulgent with rubato than some, including Iván Fischer in the Dances of Marosszék – again, it’s about control. Others might want more flair, but there’s not an awful lot wrong with these committed performances that underline Kodály’s craft as much as his soul and include a rich, to-the-point essay by Edward Yadzinski.