Highly rated star performers can all too easily avoid the farther reaches of contemporary music. These four works written for Anne-Sophie Mutter between 2007 and 2011 are all in their different ways closer to the modern centre ground than the exotic fringes. But it is still gratifying for music lovers keen to escape the staple violin concerto diet to be offered such unusual repertory in such a high profile CD release: and there is certainly nothing bland about these particular manifestations of centre-ground composition.

Take Sebastian Currier’s Time Machines, whose seven sections easily deflect gibes about ‘mechanical’ modernism. Currier (b1959) can call on a polished technique that embraces hints of more familiar American models ranging from Aaron Copland at one extreme to Elliott Carter at the other. There’s energy in the eclecticism and if some passages verge on the routine, especially in the way the solo instrument is put through its virtuoso paces, the overall effect is lively and accessible.

Krzysztof Penderecki has gained some notoriety for lengthy neo-romantic effusions but this Duo concertante for violin and double bass is concise and sharply pointed, the two rather different instruments striking sparks off each other in dance-like scherzo vein. Together with the Currier, the Duo makes an effective contrast to the more reflective but still outgoing manner of two works by Wolfgang Rihm. In both Lichtes Spiel and Dyade there’s an intriguing ambiguity about the way old and new, tradition and innovation constantly converge and diverge, perhaps as a kind of portrait of the soloist herself and her ever-expanding repertory. These recordings (live in the case of Lichtes Spiel and Time Machines) of world premiere performances sound well, with none of the tentativeness that can often afflict the first airings of new compositions.