Not so long ago, in the words of writer and broadcaster Michael Oliver, Stravinsky’s elegant Concerto ‘generally sounded very nasty indeed … as if it were being played with a wired brush!’ Recent recordings have been more mellifluous but these two stand out from the crowd. With Jakub Hrůša and his super-attentive Bamberg orchestra, Frank Peter Zimmermann trumps the self-confident projection of his younger self (EMI/Warner, 3/92). Stravinsky’s framing movements seem defter now, particularly the opening Toccata with its chortling bassoons. Shifting the argument on to yet more personal territory, Aria I flows faster, allowing Hrůša to showcase the linearity of the accompaniment without loss of affect; there is an exquisite pay-off. Aria II is still winningly Romantic.

Launching Chandos’s overlapping collection, James Ehnes gives a performance of unobtrusive eloquence, just as keenly enunciated though a little plainer – Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the free spirit who, for good or ill, makes this concerto most completely her own (Naïve, 1/14). In the present head to head you can scarcely miss the fact that Ehnes is a bit slower than Zimmermann II in every movement, Andrew Davis’s orchestra marginally less inclined than Hrůša's to take the lead in dialogue with the soloist. Does the Toccata momentarily hang fire? Possibly. Then again, Ehnes’s intonation is, as ever, second to none.

Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto was subsequently choreographed (twice) by George Balanchine, whose work on the Ballets Russes production of Apollon musagète provides a linking thread for the Chandos programme. Patient civility suits this score at least as well as vibrato-lite archaism and its ‘Apothéose’ has both emotional weight and structural inevitability.

You may be used to hearing the shorter makeweights dispatched more breezily in a drier acoustic, which is not to say that these mellow Mancunian renditions lack enchantment. Paul Griffiths’s aptly provocative annotations consider each element of the package in chronological order. What we have here is not so much ‘neoclassical’ as ‘neo everything, from Baroque masters to café music, not excluding the magpie composer’s own earlier achievements’.

In lieu of contextualising Stravinsky, BIS proposes vaguely compatible mid-century material for violin and orchestra. A slightly odd mix, but we don’t hear Bartók’s Rhapsodies often enough. Perhaps their relative brevity is to blame. Or is it the distraction of competing editions? Suffice to say that these accessible showpieces are ideally characterised by the present team, never overstated or coarsened. While some may miss the nth degree of rusticity, the cimbalom is certainly audible enough in the First Rhapsody, harp, celesta and percussion glinting persuasively in the Second.

Martinů’s workaday Suite concertante (1944) remains a rarity. Not difficult to hear why and no fault of these performers, who lately confirmed their Martinů credentials with top-rated accounts of the two violin concertos (BIS, 1/21). (Hrůša is also president of the International Martinů Circle and a published authority on the composer.) Conceptually close to Stravinsky’s concerto, Martinů’s four-movement suite was similarly meant for Samuel Dushkin, premiered by him and published by Schott, only to be largely forgotten. Less committed listeners may react more positively to the characteristic cadences of the appended Méditation (1939), a ruminative offcut from an earlier incarnation of the Suite. Insatiable fans can find both versions of the full score played by Bohuslav Matoušek with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Christopher Hogwood in the third volume of Hyperion’s set of Martinů’s complete works for violin and orchestra (7/08).

As throughout, the leaner immediacy of BIS’s sound recording reflects the freshness of the music-making, not that Chandos’s surround sound is less than state-of-the-art. Its very sumptuousness might be thought vaguely un-Stravinskian but there is no lack of detail.