James Lee III (b1975) is a master colourist. His orchestration is dazzlingly vivid and teems with detail – so much so that I occasionally found myself distracted from the music’s substance by its sonic opulence and glitter. That said, there are passages where the sounds in their sheer beauty seem to have their own substance and meaning. Listen, say, at 6'15" in Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula (2011) to the clarinets’ gauzy shimmer and then the woodwinds’ woozy interplay that follows.

It’s not just orchestral colour that Lee uses with uncommon skill; he also has a keen ear for harmonic colour, as is readily evident throughout ‘… and on the other side of the river …’, the third and final movement of Beyond Rivers of Vision (2005). I hear a hint of Messiaen’s ecstatic religious sensuality in the opening section – Lee studied church music as well as composition and many of his works seem to have biblical or religious themes – although with a peculiarly American accent.

In Chuphshah! Harriet’s Drive to Canaan (2011), Lee paints scenes from Harriet Tubman’s life – her escape from slavery and her risky returns to the South to visit her beloved family – and while he employs quotations of Spirituals, hymns and other well-known tunes, these are fleeting and sewn into the fabric with a sense of care that results in a narrative effect that’s worlds away from Ives’s more chaotic allusive style.

For me, however, the pièce de résistance of this collection is A Different Soldier’s Tale (2008), a substantial four-movement suite inspired by stories Lee’s grandfather told him about fighting as a black soldier in the Second World War, for it’s here that the composer’s mastery of detail has the greatest emotional impact. Note, for example, the subtle evocation of marching feet at around 2'30" in ‘Vigilant Patrol’, the opening movement. Marching or movement is also suggested at 2'05" in the second movement, ‘I Must Survive!’, although now in a way that’s quite terrifying. Yet the finale, ‘Celebration on Broad Street’, is in some ways the most disturbing of all, for it’s a rather harrowing depiction of a victory parade, complete with what sounds to me like a shrieking windstorm at the end.

The performances by the Vienna RSO under Marin Alsop are effective, although I’d like more ecstatic abandon in Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, which Lee describes as a depiction of the second coming of God as he passes through Orion’s Nebula. Strongly recommended nevertheless.