The press release for this disc reads like a wartime thriller. A violin concerto, composed during the summer of 1944 by a Polish composer who, recognising his family was in danger from the Nazis, needed to escape Warsaw. He hides the manuscript (a violin-and-piano reduction) in a suitcase and buries it in his garden before fleeing the city. The house is destroyed and the composer, resettled in Katowice, resigns himself to the loss of the concerto. After the composer dies in 1953, construction workers clearing the ruins of his house dig up the suitcase and the scores find their way into the archives of the National Library, where they lay forgotten for decades. Enter a young Polish violinist who, with a researcher, discovers the first 87 bars of the orchestration.

Such is the mysterious case (or suitcase?) of Ludomir Różycki (1883-1953). Others have completed the Violin Concerto before, based on the piano reduction – there’s a recording by Ewelina Nowicka, uploaded to YouTube in 2012 – but with access to the orchestral fragment, Janusz Wawrowski and composer Ryszard Brya have created a new edition/completion, with Wawrowski editing the violin part. Strangely, the booklet notes rather downplay the concerto’s re-emergence, although the album title ‘Phoenix’ alludes to its rebirth, the firebird rising from Wawrowski’s hands.

Is this a case of a rediscovered masterpiece? Not really, but Różycki’s is a very attractive concerto in a late-Romantic style. It’s written in two movements. The opening Andante is nostalgic in mood, with long, sweeping lines. The Allegro deciso second movement is over twice as long, and starts and ends with a strutting dance that could have come straight from a Korngold film score; but it’s filled with a darker interlude. With its spangly percussion, the orchestration heightens the Hollywood vibe, played glowingly by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Grzegorz Nowak. Wawrowski, with his luscious tone, plays the concerto with flair, revelling in its unashamed glamour. Jeremy Nicholas similarly enjoyed Różycki’s ‘dangerously highly calorific’ piano concertos (Hyperion, 2/16), a disc I should clearly investigate.

Różycki’s Concerto is paired with Tchaikovsky’s on the basis that it was also composed in difficult personal circumstances (after the failure of the composer’s disastrously brief marriage, in this case). Wawrowski gives a big, warm-hearted reading – preferring poetry to drama – with the central Canzonetta flowing. There’s a slight sense of reserve in some of the recitatives, such as the opening to the finale, but this is an enjoyable reading of an old warhorse. If you like the sound of the Różycki, it’s a sturdy stablemate.