We’ve had slices of atmospheric Heino Eller from Neeme Järvi and Tõnu Kaljuste before (and Toccata’s survey of the composer’s piano music continues) but nothing quite as meaty as this. It’s convenient to describe Eller as Estonia’s Sibelius, as the booklet does, but while there’s no doubting he was central to the formation of the country’s modern music life, the comparison is more troubling in terms of national identity and recent history. Arvo Pärt’s music arguably speaks more individually and distinctively of the Estonian experience while being transmuted into something truly universal. Pärt’s works are embedded in the sound of a country that identifies itself in song while Eller wrote exclusively for instruments.

Pärt was the duty producer at broadcaster ERR when Heino Eller’s 1937 Violin Concerto was premiered (and broadcast) in Tallinn in 1965. An off-air recording did the rounds in the 2000s (Vladimir Alumäe under Järvi) but this newcomer has been worth waiting for, and sees the Latvian violinist Baiba Skride find levels of grit, determination and bravura we don’t normally associate with her and her sweet-toned Stradivarius. That is precisely what this changeable, expressionist, heart-on-sleeve concerto demands (it was the first such work from the pen of an Estonian). If there’s the slight feeling of a disingenuous smile leering through the Allegro vivo coda, the suggestive colon with which the piece stops casts that jollity in a new light. In the Fantasy for violin and orchestra (1916) Skride shows us that her sweet lyricism is still fully operational.

The main course is Eller’s Symphonic Legend (1923/38), a fantastical tone poem packed with event when it isn’t mustering itself ghoulishly. It slips and slides through the chromatic scale and is peppered with goblin esque solos. Thrills come thick and fast in this rewarding score and the hard-edged but soulful sound of Elts’s ENSO underlines them all (the trumpets enjoy it particularly).

There is Wagner, Scriabin and Strauss in the mix, and it’s tempting to align Eller’s sound with Enescu’s. It’s good to hear the plush Legend against the more austere Symphony No 2. All that survives of the work is a fertile torso, abandoned after it became clear the Soviet authorities wouldn’t accept such severity. It is more than a tantalising suggestion of what might have been, with its distinctive rhythmic shimmying and grinding harmonies. Whether a true nationalist or not, Eller was some composer and this is a perfect introduction to him for those keen to look beyond the famous mood pieces.