What Martin's music needs is performances of understanding but also affection, and ASV deserves congratulation for the shrewd casting of this disc. Sebastian Benda was a composition pupil of Martin's, and once recorded the Ballade with him conducting. The Second Piano Concerto was written for Paul Badura-Skoda, and he too recorded it with the composer. The conductor here is too young to share the two pianists' warm memories of Martin, but he's Sebastian Benda's son, and the sense of all three collaborating in a tribute is strong.
Martin is often described as a serialist, but this isn't true. He used 12-note rows, but only to discipline his melodic language, which is tonal, strong and lyrical. The First Concerto might just as well have been subtitled 'The Dramatic' and Benda plays it with flair and great enjoyment, as he does the gentler but no less varied Ballade. The Second Concerto, a late work, is one of Martin's finest, with a profusion of bold, striking ideas and opportunities for grand rhetoric.
Badura-Skoda plays it as though he were delighted to make its acquaintance again.
Perhaps the orchestra could have done with two or three extra desks of strings, but the recording is excellent and the performances all that could be desired.