Nobody who has heard Xenakis’s Eonta for brass and piano will forget the patina-like figuration of that seminal work which acts, in a broad sense, as a point of departure for this enterprising project. Philip Mead has commissioned three significant works, of which Lucifer by Geoffrey Poole constitutes the lion’s share, each providing a compelling and diverse exposé of the dazzling timbral possibilities of piano and brass ensemble.

Nicholas Sackman’s dynamic Meld is a curtain-raiser of substantive compositional range and unity in which the brass carve their niche into the piano’s frenetic and quixotic landscape, often through the extra dimension, or interlocutor, of a percussion and harp battery. Sackman sees the greatest weakness of the brass ensemble as being ‘the relative inflexibility of the constituent instruments’. I’d be fascinated to know quite what he means, especially given the kaleidoscopic playing from Philip Mead and the RNCM Brass Ensemble under James Gourlay. This is a telling addition to the repertoire.

Diana Burrell’s Gold is a more starkly coherent example of tonal manipulation between the various forces. If sounding a touch unsettled in intonation and blend at the extremities, the ensemble bubbles up into exaltations of burnished and gleaming registral coloration elsewhere. Again, the players’ sense of engagement is palpable. Poole’s four-movement Lucifer offers a more pluralistic stylistic landscape with an especially keen ear for incremental rhythmic gesture. Yet its copious rhetorical effects tire quickly and one wonders whether the composer knows exactly what he wants to achieve beyond his eclectic excursions.

I would have liked more presence on the piano throughout; and yet nothing detracts from Philip Mead’s unstinting advocacy for this highly viable and under-explored medium.