For her second Hyperion disc, Alina Ibragimova chooses repertoire even rarer and more neglected. Roslavets’s First Violin Concerto (1925) was premiered in 1929, the year its composer was declared an “Enemy of the People” (ostensibly for his elitist, avant-garde music, though as much for political mistakes). Its formal ground plan is outwardly conventional: three large-scale movements, fast-slow-fast, with a cadenza linking the first two. Harmonically, however, it was very radical, Roslavets developing his system of synthetic chords thematically, whereby the orchestra concentrates on six notes of the chromatic scale while the soloist deals mainly with the other six. Edison Denisov believed it to be the finest 20th-century violin concerto after Berg’s, a judgement open to discussion (think of Bartók’s Second, Shostakovich’s First, Schoenberg’s, Hindemith’s). The central movement, undoubtedly a major utterance, is perhaps overlong, although Ibragimova’s poetic and compelling account almost negates this flaw.

The Second Concerto dates from 1936, during Roslavets’s rehabilitation after returning from exile in Tashkent (1930-33). The score came to light only recently and this is its first performance. As with the Second Chamber Symphony (12/06), the Second Concerto’s three movements are written in a less complex idiom than Roslavets had used in the 1920s and include folk-like turns of phrase that may have been intended to make it more palatable in the dangerous times of the Stalinist terror. A much slighter prospect than its predecessor (only the first movement is built on the same scale), it nevertheless proves a most enjoyable work. Ibragimova once more plays like a dream, and Volkov and the BBC Scottish SO accompany superbly throughout. Simon Eadon’s sound is first-rate. Anyone interested in rare 20th-century repertoire need not hesitate.