Wergo’s series focusing on Ensemble Musikfabrik has now reached its eighth and arguably most fascinating instalment, not least for two substantial pieces by composers of the middle generation. In Graffiti (2013), Unsuk Chin brings out the concept’s subversiveness – tracing its presence in the constantly renewing texture of ‘Palimpsest’, then the ominous context of its occurrence in ‘Notturno urbano’, before ‘Passacaglia’ evinces an appropriately anarchic slant on its time-honoured form – capping off what is the composer’s most combative work in recent years. Hardly less absorbing is Miramondo multiplo (2007), Olga Neuwirth’s trumpet concerto whose five movements have both allegorical and evocative overtones. Thus ‘Aria of the Angel’ finds the soloist in direct confrontation with wind and percussion, tension gradually subsiding into the languorous ‘Aria of Memory’ (replete with allusions to ‘cool jazz’), before the sardonic ‘Aria of Cold Blood’ with the soloist locked into a morass of orchestral ostinatos: ‘Aria of Peace’ then unfolds as a rapt monologue against hazy string harmonies, before ‘Aria of Pleasure’ has the soloist in a trio with orchestral trumpets before the brusque pay-off. Marco Blaauw is at his unflinching best in a reduction which loses nothing of the original’s impact.

The remaining items are products of the unique worldview of Herman Blount (1914 93), aka Sun Ra, whose determinedly cosmic approach to free jazz is heard here in the largely improvised Outer Nothingness, with its explosive central outburst, then the intricately detailed Pleiades, which responds especially well to Frank Gratkowski’s far-reaching (though hardly far-fetched!) arrangement. The latter contributes some scintillating saxophone, while Musikfabrik give their collective all throughout. Suitably vivid sound and lavish packaging are further enhancements of a release that has few equals among recent contemporary miscellanies.