John Woolrich’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” is a repository for musical miniatures. The three Books of Studies for Wind Quintet contain 21 movements, the longest lasting just over three minutes. The work that gives the disc its title has nine movements ranging from short to tiny and is built around a Schumann fragment lasting a mere 41 seconds. Such microscopic forms are a Woolrich speciality, provoking him to etch out the pithiest utterances and to create a lasting impression from the most economical materials.

A good example of how this can work is the third study from Bk 3, with a brilliant horn solo that manages to be both angry and eloquent. Woolrich uses the ensemble to chart shifting alliances: no free-for-alls but a distilled transparency which usually achieves considerable intensity. His determination to avoid textural overload and formal imbalance works especially well when the music alludes to models. Monteverdi, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner and Nono are the ones the composer identifies, and all of these except Schumann are ghostly presences in one of the two longer pieces, Favola in Musica I.

The longest by some way (nearly 15 minutes) is Darker Still for flute and piano, and here any possible allusions are more oblique. Not that the music is in any way evasive or obscure: it even risks being over-deliberate, spacing out the separate phases of its form and ensuring that every texture makes its presence felt before being set aside. All six players respond enthusiastically to the music’s idiomatic consistencies, and although the recording is a bit airless, the balance is good.