By Jonathan Blumhofer

There are already countless fine documents of the Sibelius Concerto, but Canadian violinist James Ehnes finds new angles from which to examine this favorite; Frank Dupree is a dexterous keyboardist whose grasp of Nikolai Kapustin’s jazzy style is assured.

Among many other things, Jean Sibelius was a thwarted violinist. Though the Finnish composer took the instrument up too late to become a virtuoso, he did manage the last laugh: his 1905 D-minor Violin Concerto is, today, one of the staples of the canon.

That work anchors James Ehnes’ latest traversal through the repertoire, a beautifully played, thoughtfully curated survey of Sibelius’s compositions for violin and orchestra. Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra take up the latter role.

Though there are already countless fine documents of the Concerto, the Canadian violinist finds new angles from which to examine this favorite. Under his hands, the opening of the big first movement is both perfectly serene and rhythmically precise.

Sibelius’s sometimes knotty writing for the soloist is outstandingly voiced, nowhere more impressively than in the hazardous run of octave double stops in that section’s coda. Throughout Ehnes’ performance, his part is consistently well-directed and impeccably characterful, his reading ever alive to the music’s shifting states of atmosphere: enchanting in the Adagio, eerily sinister over the finale’s passages of artificial harmonics.

His approach is more than matched by the contributions of Gardner and the Bergen ensemble. The English conductor draws playing of impressive rhythmic and textural clarity from his forces: the thick orchestral writing in the first movement’s recapitulation emerges with becoming lucidity and the horn syncopations in the Adagio are wonderfully pointed. Even better is the collective’s sensitivity to the score’s ambience, be that chilly, stormy, fervent – or anything in between.

The disc’s remaining selections all post-date the Concerto. All of them slighter, they sometimes echo the bigger work, and moments in each suggest an established composer experimenting with new forms of expression.

Ehnes, Gardner, and the Bergen Philharmonic revel in all of it, from the echoes of Night Ride and Sunrise in the second of Two Serenades to the hymn-like “Laetare anima mea” and tempestuous “Dévotion” that make up Two Pieces, and the six movements across two sets of Humoresques.

Most striking is the Suite, Sibelius’s last instrumental work. Completed in 1929, the effort is anything but elegiac, its three movements variously dancing, sweet, and lively. The score reveals a side of the composer the great Finnish icon rarely let on to – one that, in its way, makes the ensuing, thirty-year-long “silence of Järvenpää” all the more mysterious.

Ever since George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue demonstrated that the rhythms of jazz and forms of classical music can play well together, no shortage of composers have sought – to varying degrees of success – to bridge the divide between the musics.

One of the more fascinating of those was Nikolai Kapustin, whose reputation has grown considerably since his death in 2020. Currently the subject of a multi-volume series from the pianist Frank Dupree, the Russian composer emerges in this third installment as a stylish manager of both idioms, though his stylistic voice is firmly planted in the world of jazz.

The album’s six selections range, chronologically, from the early 1960s to 1993. All, except the Concerto No. 2 and the Concert Rhapsody, are scored for solo piano and big band; that pair involve piano and orchestra, though Kapustin’s writing for both types of ensemble is, in spirit if not instrumentation, largely the same.

Both the Second Concerto and the Rhapsody provide no shortage of extroverted virtuosity and allusions to various genres. The former’s lush slow movement, for instance, features beguiling bossa nova rhythms. Meanwhile, the latter’s “Introduction” seems to channel Oscar Peterson.

Similarly engaging are the “I Got Plenty o’ Nothin’”-ish Variations and the Nocturne, with its Sinatra-worthy instrumentation and languid turns of phrase. In the Toccata, which receives its world premiere recording here, the motoric writing suggests souped-up Ellington.

The disc’s most recent offering, 1993’s Piano Concerto No. 6, on the other hand, eschews the easy tunefulness of the earlier works for a still vital but more abstracted musical language.

Through it all, Dupree, who’s accompanied by the SWR Big Band and SWR Symphonieorchester, both led by conductor Dominik Beykirch, navigates everything brilliantly. He’s a dexterous keyboardist whose grasp of Kapustin’s style is assured, whether navigating the Toccata’s bravura episodes or the more introspective ones of the Nocturne or Sixth Concerto.

Though the recording’s engineering is sometimes a touch dry, soloist and ensembles – as well as Jakob Krupp’s bass and Meinhard “Obi” Jenne’s drumset – are well balanced. Taken together, this is an effort that’s as fun to listen to as it is well made.

Jonathan Blumhofer is a composer and violist who has been active in the greater Boston area since 2004. His music has received numerous awards and been performed by various ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Camerata Chicago, Xanthos Ensemble, and Juventas New Music Group. Since receiving his doctorate from Boston University in 2010, Jon has taught at Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and online for the University of Phoenix, in addition to writing music criticism for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.