What a fascinating, beautiful disc. Rachel Barton Pine has borrowed the name from the four Blues Dialogues for unaccompanied violin by Dolores White. Around them, she’s drawn on a two-decade fascination with music by black composers to assemble a remarkably varied and rewarding recital linked by the unifying idea of the Blues. And if that idea initially suggests a formula – or (gulp!) crossover – that impression is quickly dispelled.

William Grant Still’s Suite evokes Brahmsian romanticism, Dolores White quotes Bartók, and Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Filter moves from Jimi Hendrix-inspired tonal distortion to a brilliant moto perpetuo derived from electronic dance music. Billy Childs’s Incident on Larpenteur Avenue – commissioned by Pine for this collection – unfolds a story of racial injustice with the same economy of means, and sublimated pain, as Janáček’s Piano Sonata. The disc’s title is valid: these really are ‘dialogues’ in the most creative and stimulating sense.

Need it be said that Pine plays everything here gloriously – from the gleaming virtuoso dazzle of David Baker’s opening Blues (Deliver My Soul) to the full-throated lower-string tone and caressing portamentos that she brings to Clarence Cameron White’s 1927 Levee Dance. Listen to how unaffectedly she outlines the melody of Still’s central slow movement; enjoy the thunder with which pianist Matthew Hagle launches Wendell Logan’s Duke Ellington transcription, and the Aeolian-harp tones with which Pine finally makes that glorious melody dissolve. In passages of virtuoso display, she’s as sure-footed and as agile as an acrobat.

You might be sceptical about the capacity of instrumental music to convey a socio-political message, and that’s your prerogative (though the booklet notes are excellent, and very comprehensive). This is a deeply rewarding disc regardless.