Although his music has attracted significant premieres and several recordings, this is the highest-profile disc yet devoted to the British-French-Israeli composer Nimrod Borenstein (b1969), three of whose recent orchestral pieces are featured here. Most substantial is the Violin Concerto (2013), which its composer intends as following in the lineage of Brahms, Sibelius and Shostakovich, but which more directly calls to mind Stravinsky in the layout of its four movements and the Second Concerto of Prokofiev in aspects of its figuration and motifs.

Technically demanding while never merely showy, at least as rendered by the excellent Irmina Trynkos, the solo part plays out against an orchestral backing where timpani and vibraphone enjoy a concertante role in music whose textural resourcefulness is not quite matched by its thematic memorability or expressive uniformity. Much the same also holds good for the other works. The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe (2009) is a triptych which unfolds from the luminous timbres of ‘Light’, through the tenuous tranquillity of ‘Peace’, to the cumulative animation of ‘Adam and Eve’. If You Will It, It Is No Dream (2012) is a showpiece where the composer’s much-vanted ‘multimelodic’ technique gives rise to music of an immediacy and distinctiveness almost equal to its nine-minute duration.

What is never in doubt is the commitment of the Oxford Philharmonic and long-time advocate Vladimir Ashkenazy in interpreting this music in the best possible light. Those responsive to the work of Nicolas Bacri or Guillaume Connesson should certainly give Borenstein a try.