I’d buy this CD just for the Kaipainen, a strong, eventful work written in the 1980s. Its central movement, a tense funeral march featuring dissonant double stops in violin and cello, is surrounded by two dark, manic scherzos, with outer movements at more moderate speed; the first is full of intimations of the drama to come, the last more calm and serene, its coda floating away in the violin’s highest register. The Grieg Trio play with great expertise and an evident sense of commitment.

There’s a vivid awareness of the dramatic qualities of Op 1 No 3 and the introduction to the Kakadu Variations. The variations themselves are presented with wit and spirit, the very clear textures emphasised by a rather close, immediate recording that’s also very appropriate for the Kaipainen. Sometimes, as at the start of the B flat Allegretto and in the C minor Trio’s third movement, I wished the players had phrased more elegantly in order to convey the feeling of Beethoven’s appoggiaturas. It’s a shame that the Op 1 Trio is shorn of its first and last movement repeats, and in several places – the finale’s second theme provides one example – the violinist makes rather ugly bulges on each note where Beethoven suggests a smooth delivery.

But these are small quibbles in the context of such alert, spirited performances, and a programme that, intriguingly, seems to highlight Beethoven’s originality by placing it next to an inventive modern work; Kaipainen can hold his own, but Beethoven remains as vital and relevant as he ever was.