This album follows an earlier recording by the same artist, accordionist Helmut C Jacobs, devoted to the fandango. The current release also features several fandangos, including a sprawling and fascinating work by Antonio Soler, intermixed with boleros, a related dance form that emerged in Spain slightly later in the 18th century. Unlike the fandango, built over a repeated bass ostinato pattern, the bolero is a looser form, and in many ways more interesting, expressive and certainly less repetitive. The fandango, indeed, can be a bit monotonous.

Most of the works here were originally written for the keyboard – harpsichord or pianoforte – though in at least one case, all that is preserved is a melodic line (with Jacobs filling in the implied bass). The accordion makes a very different sound, lacking the strong ictus of the harpsichord and much of the versatility of the pianoforte.

And yet it is an obvious choice for transcription, given the origins of these works in social dance. You may think, for a moment, that you are hearing a small organ, though the accordion tends to be breathier than that, and the tone lacks the indefinite but robust sustaining sound of the organ. Jacobs’s performance tends to sound at times slightly laboured or ponderous, though he compensates for the instrument’s disadvantages with a smart use of agogic accents and slight but strategic tempo changes.

The Soler, lasting almost 13 minutes, is the highlight of the album, with more musical interest and more compositional mastery on display than many of the other rather slight works. Jacobs is at his best in this piece, sustaining the drama, deftly navigating the twists and turns and keeping the ears alert to the composer’s ingenuity in developing variations over the rather wearying two-bar accompaniment pattern. A collection of anonymous works from the Harry Ransom Center archive at the University of Texas in Austin is also full of pleasant diversions. But the disc invites more background listening than focused attention.