David Frühwirth tells a good musical yarn. Take for examples the bitter-sweet Gershwin piece that gives its name to the title and the gritty, slightly ambiguous Tango Habanera by Kurt Weill, where his muscular tone suits the mood. There are more introspective narratives at work, too, such as Joseph Achron’s delicate Liebeswidmung, a beautiful miniature which suggests subtle worlds far beyond its modest scale, and far distant to the composer’s better-known and overtly heart-on-sleeve Hebrew Melody.

Wieniawski’s rarely-heard Fantasie Orientale suggests Jewish-Gypsy influences but I can’t say I was taken with Efrem Zimbalist’s Sarasateana tango, which pilfers Sarasate’s tunes without making anything memorably new from them. How different is Vieuxtemps’s subtler ‘Bohemiènne’, a world-première recording and a piece where traditional gypsy-style slow-fast alternations are imaginatively handled. You sense Frühwirth enjoyed the encounter, more maybe than with Rachmaninov’s workaday Danses Tziganes or the two A minor Chopin arrangements, neither of which sound terribly convincing. In my experience only Fritz Kreisler was able to bring off his own sighing arrangement of the A minor Mazurka. Frühwirth sounds bored or self-conscious, or both, and Sarasate’s take on the great A minor Waltz includes vulgar leaps that do nothing to enhance the expressive scope of the music.

The other pieces, whether rare (Musin, Sitt, Glazunov, Hubay) or more familiar (Albéniz, Ravel) are never less than attractive and the musical sequence has been well planned. Frühwirth’s fine playing occasionally veers sharp and sometimes (not always) promotes a sense of identification between composer and performer, the kind of rapport that is essential if this sort of programme is going to work. Henri Sigfridsson offers excellent support and the sound is both forward and clear.