Look, I don’t want to appear chippy – that’s Nonclassical’s job – but a label that chooses to define itself by what it’s not and then, guess what, releases music that reveals, actually, what it thinks it isn’t it most certainly is, can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Whenever I hear Sciarrino and Lachenmann, my hunch that the cartel surrounding modern composition is finished, parked up in a middle-of-the-road central reservation waiting for the tow van, is momentarily overcome. Yes, there is hope. Peter Zinovieff, the electronic music sage and one-time close confidant of Birtwistle, is represented, Ravel’s Violin Sonata too. How could this record miss?

It’s non-classical, pro-fad marketing, that’s how. Protecting music from the more regressive, supercilious tendencies of ‘classical music culture’ is a worthwhile thing but sticking the prefix ‘non’ in front of anything you don’t like, hoping that might bring about change, is doomed, especially when you have nothing meaningful to proffer as an alternative. Sciarrino’s Six Caprices are scurrying, trembling, fragile portals into the outer limits of violin timbre that really can’t be recorded too clearly. So what does Orazbayeva do? She puts the piece into ‘real-life acoustic environments’ – car parks, warehouses, bus stops et al – thereby killing Sciarrino’s nuances of micro-sound stone dead. Segueing Lachenmann’s Toccatina into a maudlin Russian folksong is just non‑sense.

The press release claims Zinovieff’s OUR is ‘extraordinary’ and the interlacing of string and electronic textures is indeed stylish; but I don’t hear the Ravel ‘as raw and heartfelt’. This is a remarkably unremarkable performance – and why one movement only? Looking at the press release closer, I notice Nonclassical is happy to trade off Orazbayeva’s utterly classical associations: Boulez, Birtwistle, Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, which about says it all – its posturing against a club it desperately wants to be, and is, part of.