It was Samuel Dushkin, the violinist for whom Stravinsky wrote his Concerto and Duo Concertant, who commissioned these two works. The First Violin Concerto, dating from 1932-33, evidently didn’t please Dushkin; after getting the composer to make revisions, he still didn’t perform the work, which only saw the light of day after Martinu’s death when it was premièred in 1973 by Josef Suk. Despite all this, Dushkin had come back to Martinu a few years later with a request for a suite for violin and orchestra, and this time he didn’t spurn the result.

I can’t say I’m bowled over by either piece. Though Martinu writes extremely idiomatically for the violin, I find those movements where he adopts an energetic neo-classical mode – the Suite’s opening Toccata, and the Concerto’s first movement – dry and unappealing. The two slow movements, with their rather pale echoes of the Czech pastoral idiom, are somewhat more enjoyable, and the more dance-like movements, such as the Suite’s Rondo finale, are certainly quite compelling; in these pieces the characteristic sonorous and rhythmic quality of the Czech Philharmonic really comes into its own.

Throughout, Matousek is a neat, lively, sweet-toned soloist, with Hogwood directing an alert, poised accompaniment. In the Suite’s slightly grotesque Scherzo, however, I began to wonder what a violinist with the personality of a Heifetz or a Szigeti might have made of the music.