The Toronto-based ARC Ensemble continue their rehabilitation of 20th-century Jewish composers from across the ideological divide with three chamber works by Kharkiv-born Dmitri (or Dmytro) Klebanov (1907 87), whose career inevitably foundered in the wake of Stalin’s post-war cultural dictates and only belatedly regained its earlier momentum during his later years.

Dedicating his Fourth Quartet (1946) to the memory of ill-fated Mykola Leontovych hardly helped matters. The derivation of the opening Allegro’s main theme from that composer’s now familiar ‘Carol of the Bells’ sets the tone for melodically appealing and rhythmically incisive music, consolidated by the songful variations of the Larghetto and the folk-inflected playfulness of the Scherzando – an infectious Allegro ending this work with its affectionate nod to Russia’s Silver Age. The Fifth Quartet (1965) duly brings an incremental expansion of Klebanov’s idiom in the harmonic astringency and emotional restiveness of its opening movement, qualities distilled in the Andante’s oblique progress towards a fervent climax and quizzical close. The alternately energetic and pensive Vivace builds to a decisive conclusion.

Most impressive, though, is the Second Piano Trio (1958) – a half-hour piece whose opening Allegro purposefully intercuts between its ruminative and more animated episodes, followed by a Scherzo whose rhythmic brio finds an ideal foil in the suavity of its Trio. The highlight is an expansive Adagio that takes in eloquent solos or duos for all three instruments en route to a coda affecting in its expressive restraint, countered by a final Allegro whose methodical unfolding ultimately finds resolution in a fatalistic revisiting of the music heard at the outset.

Performances and recording are to the customary high standards of this series, while Simon Wynberg’s notes provide valuable perspective on a composer whose music, judging from that heard here, is worth further exploration – maybe one or other of his nine symphonies?