With his Pedagogical Sketchbook often regarded as a virtual manual in composition, Paul Klee has exerted a far-reaching influence on modern music. Few composers were so profoundly affected as Sándor Veress, whose encounter with Klee’s work after fleeing Hungary in 1949 gave rise to seven fantasies that range from the Bachian gravity of ‘Old Sound’ and the intensely elegiac ‘Green in Green’ to the rhythmic playfulness of ‘Stone Collection’.

Grau and Schumacher give a committed performance, differing from the fine one by András Schiff and Dénes Várjon in that Bartókian astringency is tempered by awareness of the gentler neo-classicism of Veress’s Swiss contemporaries Martin and Honegger. Preference may equally be determined by coupling. The Warners disc offers Veress’s powerful Concerto for Piano, Strings and Percussion, whereas Col Legno features contrasting approaches to Klee’s drawing A Garden for Orpheus from two present-day Swiss composers. Eric Gaudibert makes a horn the unassertive focal-point of a piece in which strings weave a sonic tapestry of fastidious subtlety, whereas Jean-Luc Darbellay combines them in a short but eventful span whose dense textures are mediated by curt basset-horn interjections.

Superb playing from Olivier Darbellay, as also from Camerata Bern under Erich Höbarth. The recorded sound is fine, as are booklet annotations (though the Warners disc includes colour reproductions of each painting). As a ‘portrait of the artist’, this release is warmly recommended.