There is always the exciting prospect, when presented with a disc of an unknown work by some neglected composer, of a new friend – a work that you will want to cherish and return to often. Sadly, Eduard Lassen’s 1888 Concerto is not one of them. This may simply be a matter of personal taste but I found little to enjoy in its procession of unmemorable, wishy-washy themes, its amorphous first movement and, I’m sorry to say, the thin, unvaried tone and dynamics of the soloist. Once the orchestral exposition ends, the opening Allegro movement (13'21") has not one single tutti until the final bars, the violin offering a meandering diddle-diddle-diddle sequence that I couldn’t wait to end. The slow movement opens rather beautifully before declining to go anywhere in particular, and around the 6'20" mark there is a section that, if I didn’t know Andrew Keener was in the producer’s chair, I could have sworn suffered from poor intonation. The finale picks up a little but not sufficiently to rescue the work.

Far better is the 1894 concerto by (Ludwig) Philipp Scharwenka, the elder and lesser-known brother of Xaver (the composer of four sublime piano concertos in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series). Here, at least, is some stronger material and a greater sense of purpose from Linus Roth. Indeed, in the beguiling slow movement he soars most affectingly above the stave and makes the most of the delightful finale, a movement that I can see becoming popular in its own right and being played independently on those classical radio stations that permit such things.

The final item is the slight, short (9'35") single-movement Concerto by Rued Langgaard, which, though written in 1942, speaks in the same lyrical, tuneful and tonal language as the other two works, having the additional interest of a prominent piano part. With Roth at his most sweetly persuasive and the BBC Scottish SO offering incisive, idiomatic accompaniment under Antony Hermus, this might just be enough to tip the balance in favour of one of Hyperion’s less compelling releases.