Penderecki’s Sonata for cello and orchestra (1964) embodies his transition from the turbulent texturalism of his earliest works to the more expansive thematicism and rooted harmonies of the idiom fully revealed in the St Luke Passion. Though almost a miniature by his later standards, the Sonata parades an intriguing mix of styles, with more than a passing nod to those demonic caperings, stemming from Shostakovich, which would come to full flower in Penderecki’s operas The Devils of Loudon and Ubu Rex.

Such pointed forcefulness is much less evident in the disc’s pair of large-scale later pieces. It’s tempting to claim that the Concerto grosso (2000), while three times the length of the Sonata, and with three soloists to the Sonata’s one, has barely a third of the musical substance. Those drooping laments endemic to Penderecki’s neo-romantic idiom are thick on the ground, and the last two of the work’s six movements are particularly prone to predictable note-spinning. There are all too few of those less formulaic moments which make the fourth movement the most interesting.

Nevertheless, the work from 2003 called Largo, a concerto in three movements, none of which is actually marked largo, has more personality and more cogency. Perhaps Penderecki was enlivened by the Rostropovich commission (the 2005 premiere was one of the great cellist’s last appearances) and among its strengths are a beefy, dance-like march (more echoes of Shostakovich) and a poignant, uneasily serene ending. Arto Noras is an eloquent soloist in Largo, and all the other performers emerge with credit in recordings that tend to home in on the soloists while maintaining a rather resonant acoustic.