This issue marks the first foray into contemporary repertoire by John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London. The four works were written in the past seven years by Kenneth Fuchs, and the most recent, Cloud Slant, is dedicated to Wilson and his orchestra.

Listening to this concerto for orchestra, inspired by three paintings by Helen Frankenthaler from the 1960s, I’m reminded of the fictional portrayal of Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George as he approaches a blank canvas, muttering ‘design, composition, tension, balance’, for Fuchs writes with a total command of the medium. The palette dazzles and each tableau is both inventive and tuneful, with a strong sense of time and place. The triptych opens with ‘Blue’, a vivid cascade of blue into a golden yellow base, which is underlined by a rising motif introduced on horn eight bars in. I’m inclined to give it the subtitle ‘on a clear day’, for it reminds me of the song of that name by Burton Lane, the title of which was drawn from a popular saying of the time: ‘on a clear day you can see Catalina’. The motif returns in the second movement, ‘Flood’, where it receives a widescreen treatment. ‘Cloud Slant’, the third panel, modifies themes and motifs already heard, including that sliding glissando passage on horns, a slant in itself.

Pacific Visions for string orchestra was written as a concert opener for the opening of a new wing at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. Again it marries those four artistic truths with breathing spaces, vis-à-vis the cadenza led by the cello, where the thrifty nature of the scoring contrasts with the playful syncopation and good humour of the rest. How these string players relish it all as they press ahead to the dizzy conclusion.

Solitary the Thrush is a concerto for C and alto flutes, the two instruments holding a mirror to the title drawn from Walt Whitman’s elegiac poem ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’. This is an extraordinary, visionary piece, unsettling at times, the eerie tone of the alto flute dwelling on the poem’s theme of man’s mortality. Flautist Adam Walker captures the poetic spirit of the piece beautifully. He brings a frisson to each phrase, with playing well attuned to the orchestral timbres, notably the piccolo and divided flute lines perched up in the stratosphere. What price that lark now, I ask myself.

The fitting finale, Quiet in the Land, looks over its shoulder at the forebears of the American classical scene. What began life as a pastoral idyll (there’s a performance of the original on YouTube) has morphed into a thing of disquiet, as the composer mulls over recent events in American politics. Hamlet’s line ‘What warlike noise is this’ comes to mind as the air is rent asunder by a mighty crash with snare drum and timpani ensuing, uneasy in its wake. The recurring chorale motif, composed of the perfect fifth and major and minor narrow intervals, so characteristic of America’s music lexicon, has the final say, a sign that the composer’s optimistic spirit still burns, but perhaps in a lower key. The Sinfonia of London and their conductor were born for this music and they execute it with aplomb. The recording, like the playing, is immaculate, the result of a four-day session in St Augustine’s, Kilburn, known affectionately as the Cathedral of North London. Highly recommended.