Welcoming NMC’s first Woolrich disc‚ of relatively small­scale vocal and chamber music (10/96)‚ I expressed the hope ‘that recordings of some of Woolrich’s larger works will soon follow’. Five years is not exactly ‘soon’‚ but this new release has been well worth waiting for. The disc takes its title from the 14­minute tone poem The Ghost in the Machine (1990)‚ whose tracing of an increas­ingly fraught confrontation between mechanical and intuitive‚ ordered and disordered‚ is a favoured Woolrich theme. Such confrontations tend to be characterised by the degree to which the anti­mechanical element is lyrical‚ as is very clearly the case in the other short work here‚ The Barber’s Timepiece (1986)‚ whose source is a story by Calvino. The two concertos also deal‚ in very different ways‚ with comparable entanglements and oppositions. That for viola (1993) is a remarkable achievement‚ a sequence of seven quite short sections‚ each alluding to a specific genre or composer (Monteverdi‚ Mozart‚ Schumann‚ Wagner)‚ but with no hint of pastiche. There is the variety of mood appropriate for a work lasting nearly half an hour. Yet the predominant tone is reticent‚ even bleak – a melancholic meditation on sorrow and loss which is paradoxically affirmative in the way it gives satisfying form and memorable expression to its ideas and processes. The Oboe Concerto (1996)‚ another well­nigh 30­minute score‚ is more diffuse‚ its material more conventional in relation to the character (and limitations) of the solo instrument. Here too‚ however‚ Woolrich devises a process of progressive intensification culminating in a decisive confrontation between soloist and orchestra. Lars Anders Tomter‚ the viola soloist‚ probably has the more rewarding task‚ but Nicholas Daniel is no less impressive in the way he copes with Woolrich’s virtuosic oboe writing. Martyn Brabbins ensures that the connective threads of these extended musical designs are unobtrusively sustained‚ and the recorded sound is excellent.