I may be genetically conditioned to adore this repertoire, but this new album from Mahan Esfahani is an unalloyed joy from first chord to last. Martinů, Krása and Kalabis all on one programme: what’s not to like? Of course, sometimes expectations run wild ahead of actuality, but not here. If I encounter an album as good as this one this year I will be overjoyed!

Martinů’s Concerto is – just – the earliest work here, written in 1935 during his long sojourn in Paris. Martinů’s music almost always smiles good-naturedly, but in this beautifully nimble account it positively beams. The accompanying ensemble is relatively modest – eight strings, flute, bassoon and piano (played by Ivo Kahánek, no less) – but what other composer would create a chamber concerto for harpsichord with an orchestral piano nestling in the accompaniment? Esfahani and conductor Alexander Liebreich achieve a remarkably balanced, warm sound, each line and texture precise and needle-sharp. A much more satisfying experience than Robert Hill’s for Naxos (A/12).

Hindemith did not, so far as I am aware, write for the harpsichord, but had he penned a chamber concerto for it in the 1920s or ’30s it would surely have sounded much like Hans Krása’s delightful diptych for harpsichord and seven instruments (1936). Bearing the Hindemithian title of Kammermusik, it was partly based on a song Krása had composed a few years before. On first hearing, there is a feeling of incompleteness, as if a robust finale somehow failed to materialise, but familiarity shows that Krása got it spot on.

Spot on well describes the final and largest item here, Viktor Kalabis’s 1975 Concerto for his wife (and Esfahani’s teacher and mentor), the late, great Zuzana RůŽičková. Esfahani writes so movingly in the booklet of the composer and this most personal of his works, and it is magnificently played, every bit as splendid as RůŽičková’s and Kalabis’s own account (Supraphon, 7/13) – but with finer sound – and more than a match for Jory Vinikour’s fine if occasionally more cautious rival (Cedille, 10/19). Here, as throughout, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra’s accompaniment is sensitive and ideal, and Esfahani plays like an angel.