Lucy Humphris’s debut album (her only previous recording – as far as – I can determine – being Cecilia McDowall’s Three Antiphons on Naxos in 2021) is a fascinating showpiece of her not inconsiderable technical abilities. It ranges across contemporary and new music (1994 to 2018), her own arrangements (some of the original music dating back 400 years), and three separate instruments: the trumpet in C, piccolo trumpet and flugelhorn.

Humphris regards Maxwell Davies’s ‘incredible’ Litany – for a Ruined Chapel between Sheep and Shore (1999) as ‘one of the most stunning and vocal works for trumpet composed in the 20th century’ and plays it as such. Comparing well with John Wallace’s (for whom it was written) and Clément Saunier’s accounts, her slightly more measured tempo brings out Davies’s atmospheric invention to fine effect. In Paths (1994), Takemitsu’s haunting dialogue with Lutosławski’s ghost, Humphris handles the alternation of muted and unmuted very adeptly, slightly more poetically than Saunier, although she cannot match Alison Balsom – or the noticeably swifter Håkan Hardenberger (the original performer) – for sheer range of feeling and control.

Filippos Raskovic’s Òstria, specially written for her in 2018 and evoking the hot Saharan wind that blows north into Greece, is a notable addition to the catalogue, testing Humphris’s range of instrumental colour to the full. Her transcription of the First Suite of Respighi’s Ancient Airs for piccolo trumpet is charming despite one or two wobbly high notes, as is Messiaen’s Vocalise-étude (1935) on flugelhorn, a real-time arrangement, if you will. Less successful is In the Mists, Janáček’s wonderfully Impressionist piano cycle. Turning it into a trumpet suite robs it of its subtlety much as fierce sunlight burns away fog. Her and accompanist Harry Rylance’s idea of Molto adagio in its second movement is way too fast while, perversely, the opening Andante is mostly far too slow! Good, clear sound and a fascinating listen overall.