This new Hyperion account of Peteris Vasks’s Distant Light swells the number of recordings it has garnered to five, an amazing statistic for a work premiered as recently as August 1997. Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised: the Latvian’s music speaks without artifice and offers an enticing blend of unspoilt beauty, compassionate heartache and superior compositional craft. Having managed to hear all the competing versions, I can confirm that none is a dud, while still declaring a preference for dedicatee Gidon Kremer’s pioneering reading (Teldec, 10/99 – nla), which has a charisma, intensity and concentration that are wholly arresting. More’s the pity it has recently been deleted, so head-of-the-pack status must now, I think, pass to this excellently engineered newcomer. Anthony Marwood keeps a tighter grip on the structural tiller than either Kangas or Andreasson and plays with exquisite polish and intimacy of feeling; he also secures an exceptionally alert and involving contribution from his Academy forces.

Winds, percussion and double basses assemble for the coupling, Kurt Weill’s ambitious early Violin Concerto of 1923-24, which receives as persuasive and vital a performance as any I have encountered. Perhaps Frank Peter Zimmermann’s live rendering with Jansons and the BPO conveys marginally more in the way of unruffled poise; but a characterful Marwood and company quarry every ounce of bony lyricism and spooky burlesque from what can initially seem a rather dry, unyielding creation. Again, the sound is vividly realistic (if lacking just a whisker in bite and focus), and the disc as a whole certainly bodes well for Marwood’s tenure as artistic director of the Irish CO.