Publicity for this CD has given prominence to Joby Talbot’s membership of a popular beat combo, but this is not a case of a rock musician bidding for respectability by dabbling with classical sounds and forms. Not that it matters, since the quality of the music rather than the composer’s cv is what counts, but Talbot’s ‘serious’ credentials are already established: after studying with Brian Elias, Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton, he won the Dorothy Adams String Quartet Prize at Guildhall and wrote works for Evelyn Glennie, the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Philharmonic.

What immediately impressed me about these pieces was his control, the economy and restraint of his writing. The materials and processes he uses are generally simple and transparent, but effective. The results are frequently moving, and often beautiful. similarities…, an elegy for Fred Hodder, a violinist who died last year at the age of 20, features particularly sensitive, tonally expressive playing from Everton Nelson and Chris Worsey.

In Blue Cell, Talbot avoids the tediously virtuosic shtick commonly associated with writing for all-saxophone groups, producing one of the most credible saxophone quartet pieces I’ve heard. If anything can be called typical of Talbot’s writing it is what might paradoxically be described as this virtuoso reserve: although there are occasional examples of instrumental athleticism, as in the First String Quartet, the bulk of the music develops slowly and slightly, stretching song forms across ostinati or repeated chord-patterns, permitting close and leisurely scrutiny of each event. This puts a different kind of pressure on the performers, and the players on this album meet the challenge admirably.