Blue Electra is a four-movement violin concerto inspired, composer Michael Daugherty (b1954) writes, ‘by the sensational life and mysterious disappearance of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart’. It’s played on this well-recorded Naxos album with dramatic flair and tonal refinement by Anne Akiko Meyers, who commissioned the work. Much of the music has a cinematic quality, like the simple, undulating idea Daugherty uses to tie together the richly scored opening movement. Almost throughout, the music is powered by the friction of duelling opposites: bold ideas and inward-looking lyricism, soaring dreams and earthbound realities. The scherzo-like second movement imagines Earhart in jazz-age Paris, and while it’s a bit lightweight in comparison with the rest, its high-spiritedness does provide something akin to comic relief.

I find Blue Electra a far stronger work than To the New World (2019), composed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Daugherty is clever in many aspects – the prominent use of the euphonium (Neil Armstrong’s instrument in his college days), say, and a soprano obbligato part that mimics the theremin (another of Armstrong’s musical interests) – but the score doesn’t feel nearly as fresh.

I’m more taken with Last Dance at the Surf (2021), a ‘dance symphony’ inspired by the iconic Surf Ballroom in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (not far from the composer’s hometown), where rock’n’roll innovator Buddy Holly played his last concert. In this score, as in Blue Electra, Daugherty seems keen on returning to the values of the mid-20th-century American symphonists, although with a more modern sensibility. He’s a fine craftsman, certainly – the 16-minute work is built almost entirely from a brief ostinato that resembles one of Holly’s guitar riffs – and when his imagination matches his skill, as it does here, he’s worthy of being considered alongside Harris, Hanson, Piston and their contemporaries.

As usual, David Alan Miller has the Albany Symphony playing far above their pay grade.