He first attracted attention when studying with Thomas Adès but Francisco Coll (b1985) has since evolved a distinctive persona, as is evident from this release, which ranges over 12 years of his creativity and finds him adept in his handling chamber forces of varying dimensions.

Piedras (‘Stones’, 2011) is an exemplar for his earlier music, its rhythmic impetus and registral extremes complementing the speculative sonorities and equivocal emotions towards its centre. Inspired by García Lorca’s unrequited love for Salvador Dalí, … de voz aceitunada (‘… with an olive voice’, 2010) draws flute, viola and guitar into a sonatina whose alternation of jagged gestures with sustained pathos brings to mind the later chamber works of Roberto Gerhard.

Taleas oblicuas (‘Oblique Patterns’, 2023) for oboe and ensemble translates this composer’s predilection for overt contrasts into a relatively extended frame, the rhythmic intricacy of its demonstrative sections throwing its texturally sparer and more plaintive episodes into greater relief, not least a cadenza that melds effortlessly with diaphanous string textures prior to a decisive pay-off. Three Pieces ‘after Turia’ (2021) draws on Coll’s guitar concerto, its three movements evoking his native Valencia and the cultivated bed of its eponymous river. Liquid Symmetries (2014) looks to the concept of existential flux for the volatility with which ideas mutate over its four movements, each of the 16-strong group afforded its time in the spotlight.

Throughout, the Hague-based New European Ensemble play with that blend of refinement and precision this fastidiously conceived music requires. Those who have the release of Coll’s Violin Concerto and Mural (Pentatone, 9/21) should find this a more than worthy follow-up.