Here is the giraffe-like time-travelling theorbo, in the beautiful Prelude to Stephen Goss’s hauntingly variegated concerto, startled to find itself in the midst of a modern string orchestra. The irony is that the bowed string instruments are, at least in their essentials, of greater antiquity than this Baroque oddity, whose only crime was obsolescence.

Time-travelling indeed. Following on from his superb 2015 solo theorbo work The Miller’s Tale, also written for the lutenist and theorbo player Matthew Wadsworth, the Theorbo Concerto takes its ‘principle of interwoven narratives’ from David Mitchell’s mind-bending novel Cloud Atlas, whose six connected stories are set in different times and places.

Goss, whose 2012 Guitar Concerto, written for John Williams, proved such a success with players and audiences alike, has cast his new concerto in four movements – a Baroque suite of sorts – separated by three interludes. These latter hark back to the theorbo’s role as a continuo instrument, with the theorbo and double basses accompanying, respectively, a solo violin, a solo cello and a solo viola. Furthermore, a theme-and-variations runs backwards through the four main movements.

Goss has also painted a musical portrait of Wadsworth, of the theorbo and its times, and of himself. References, evocations and stylistic interventions abound, from Baroque to blues and boogie-woogie. There is even a Shostakovian waltz and a Mexican huapango. The effect is less pastiche than a coherent argument which marshals its musical elements like slightly eccentric proofs.

As always, Wadsworth finds the greatest expressive potential in the smallest element without losing sight of the whole. He has the ideal collaborators in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Benjamin Marquise Gilmore.