It is typical of David Starobin to wind up his career as a recording artist with music by a composer who has been neglected. The American guitarist – and founder of Bridge Records – has expanded his instrument’s repertoire in heroic fashion by looking in multiple directions: he commissioned hundreds of works while dusting off countless others. On what is billed as his final studio album, Starobin introduces ‘WT Matiegka, the Bohemian lawyer, pianist, violinist, cellist and church musician, who found his most powerful expression by capturing the subtleties of early 19th-century Viennese style on the guitar’, as guitarist Paul Cesarczyk writes in the booklet.

Among the pieces Wenzeslaus Thomas Matiegka (1773-1830) composed are the Six Guitar Sonatas, Op 31, that Starobin performs here. No less a figure than the young Schubert acknowledged Matiegka’s skill by making an arrangement of one of his trios. Also a contemporary of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, Matiegka absorbed the musical practices of the day and applied them expertly in his guitar sonatas, of which 11 survive.

The sonatas of Op 31 all contain three short movements, but there’s never a hint of repetition or familiarity as these works unfold with a spectrum of creative possibility, especially in Starobin’s eloquent hands. The guitarist brings refinement to every turn of phrase, whether the music is marching, dancing or crying. Generations of guitarists will thank Starobin for bringing Matiegka’s pieces to light. This recording is a swansong to savour.