Unsuk Chin is one of the best contemporary exponents of purely instrumental music drama, and these concertos provide absorbing listening. The Piano Concerto owes an explicit debt to her teacher, Ligeti, but it also represents a gesture of independence. Its coruscating toccatas and interlocking rhythmic patterns acquire a distinctive luminosity in structures that constantly evolve and threaten disorientation, only to find new ways of suggesting stability. The piece works well when given the kind of effortlessly precise and virtuoso interpretation from both soloist and orchestra that it receives here.

The Cello Concerto was a highlight of the 2009 BBC Proms, and although the booklet-notes don’t explain the nature of the work’s 2013 revision, it remains an outstanding achievement. Spontaneously eloquent as well as powerfully dramatic, it provides Alban Gerhardt with every chance to display his superfine virtuosity, not only in affecting melodic lines, often in the cello’s highest register, but also in more forceful and assertive ideas. The orchestral writing is perfectly judged to actively engage with and complement the soloist, and the reflective, questing ending is one of the most memorable in the contemporary concerto repertory.

u is an Egyptian mythological term for air; and Chin’s 2009 composition features the Chinese mouth organ, the sheng, not to indulge in pseudo-exoticism but to explore the potential for interaction between this instrument and an orchestra using materials deriving very directly from the European expressionist tradition. The music inevitably acquires a ritualistic aura but there is also plenty of visceral excitement in a performance that is supremely well integrated and no less well recorded. A highly successful CD.