Here’s a bold experiment: a survey of viola music by Czech composers, mostly born in the 1920s, whose names many of us won’t recognise. Viola player Kristina Fialová and pianist Igor Arda≈ev have done well to remind us that good music in this corner of the globe didn’t die with Martinů.

That said, the Suite for viola and piano, Op 5, is not the most flattering representation of Karel Husa. The composer, who died only last December, wrote it as a student at the Prague Conservatory in 1945, shortly before leaving for Paris, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger and Arthur Honegger. As such it displays little of the artistic curiosity – his forays into microtonality and serialism – that distinguished his later career. But what it does, it does relatively well, namely to espouse neoclassicism, while acknowledging Husa’s debt to his Czech forefathers’ lyricism.

Two premiere recordings make a more lasting impression. Viktor Kalabis’s 1997 Viola Sonata, Op 84, is a knotty, uncompromising piece as much informed by Impressionistic harmony as it is by Bartók’s muscular rhythms. Meanwhile, Jindřich Feld’s Viola Sonata, written in 1955, combines a neo-romantic tonal language with a Stravinskian rhythmic ingenuity. Both are emotionally unbuttoned, compelling works, raising the question as to why neither Feld nor Kalabis ever made more of a splash on the international scene.

On the whole, Fialová and Ardašev do their countrymen a good turn, enjoying every opportunity for high drama. Fialová has a velvety tone, perfect for the works’ lyricism. But there is one thing lacking: variety. As a result, the wild dynamic contrasts of the Kalabis fail to make their mark, as do those more ethereal passages in the Feld. And in the remaining offering, Martinů’s Viola Sonata, you can’t help thinking longingly of Maxim Rysanov, whose 2015 recording revealed a much greater grasp of the work’s capriciousness. Not a standout release, then, but intriguing nevertheless.