The recording industry’s sustained interest in Rózsa’s concert music is heartening and this new disc from Naxos is its latest manifestation. Both works exhibit fully the strengths and appeal of the composer’s output as a whole, from its impeccable craftsmanship to its lilting Hungarian accent. The personal voice – close stylistically at times to Kodály and Bartók – is recognisably that of the film composer whose music graced the silver screen for so long.

The Hungarian Serenade started life in the early 1930s as his Op 10 for strings but Rózsa’s senior colleague Ernö von Dohnányi (who conducted the premiere in 1932) persuaded the young composer to recast it for a larger orchestra with a punchier finale. The work underwent several further revisions before emerging as the work given here. As I said when reviewing Noseda’s rival account, the Hungarian Serenade is high-quality light music. It is superbly played here, though Chandos’s rival is even slicker.

With Paul Silverthorne’s fine account (Koch, 10/96) now deleted, Gilad Karni’s ardent interpretation of the Viola Concerto is especially welcome. A fine player and former Lionel Tertis Competition prize-winner, Karni audibly relishes the work’s dark colours and rich writing. The Concerto had a difficult genesis (for Rózsa), taking four years to complete with several interruptions by film work which the composer later claimed ruined the flow. Yet the finished result does not betray this, its four movements holding together as if written in a single burst of inspiration. Karni proves a fine advocate and the Budapest Concert Orchestra provide excellent support.