BIS’s exploration of the music of Nikos Skalkottas has yielded nothing more fascinating than the Concerto for Two Violins, completed in 1945 but unorchestrated at his death four years later. In an perceptive booklet note, Christophe Sirodeau speculates that Skalkottas was attempting something different from his large-scale works – and, compared to the multi-layered textures of The Return of Ulysses (8/03) and Largo Sinfonico (6/98), its clear-cut formal divisions and Classical momentum do suggest a redefining, though not a simplification, of expressive means. Indeed, its emotional breadth makes it an unmistakable product of the composer’s stylistic maturity.

Despite its Allegro giocoso marking, the first movement is among Skalkottas’s most bracing sonata structures, with a development-cum-accompanied cadenza of real intensity. The Andante consists of five variations on a ‘Rembetiko’ – a melodic fusion of Greek folk and popular music – treated with rare fantasy and eloquence (even in piano score, the tutti writing is alive with imaginative ‘orchestral’ touches). The energetic rondo finale is not without humour, and its central cadenza draws together thematic elements in a maelstrom of activity, making demands which soloists Eiichi Chijiiwa and Nina Zymbalist meet head on. The elaborate, contrapuntal piano writing is dispatched with equal panache by Sirodeau and Nikolaos Samaltanos (their recording of the two-piano transcription of Ulysses on Agora is worth seeking out), so that, even were the orchestral part to be realised – musicologist Kostas Demertzis has apparently attempted such – the overall musical impact would probably not be that much greater.

The remainder of the disc consists of the so-called (though not by the composer) ‘Concert Cycle’, five pieces written during 1939-43 and forming a diverting sequence suitable as the second half of a concert. As it happens, this is the only Skalkottas work to have enjoyed a really first-rate recording before (Heinz Holliger et al on Philips, 10/95 – nla); the new accounts, though yielding marginally in sheer technical consistency, have greater character and interpretative finesse. Alexeï Ogrintchouk is elegantly plangent, and Eric Aubier pungently athletic in the Oboe and Trumpet Concertinos respectively, while Marc Trenel finds pathos and quirky charm amid the relative expanse of the Sonata Concertante. Two brief quartets frame the cycle with a jazzy nonchalance as unexpected as it is appealing. Commendably natural BIS sound, and a significant release.