Long in the making perhaps but, 42 years and 20 releases on, Bridge has fulfilled its plan for a Complete Edition devoted to George Crumb. Volume 21 duly reflects this with its trilogy of early, middle and late works that features successive generations of the composer’s advocates.

Uncharacteristic though it might be, the Solo Cello Sonata (1955) has long been central to its medium. Timothy Eddy confirms why with the impulsiveness of its initial Fantasia, the quixotic elegance of its central ‘Tema pastoral con variazioni’ and the unbridled virtuosity of its closing Toccata. From here to Crumb’s penultimate work is to be reminded of the consistency in his output’s evolution, Kronos-Kryptos (2020) renewing his love for percussion in the evocative tintinnabulary of ‘Easter Dawning’, the dextrous aqua-line imagery of ‘A Ghostly Barcarolle’ then visceral onslaught in ‘Drummers of the Apocalypse’. Revised after his daughter’s death, ‘Appalachian Echoes’ conflates the intimate and the transcendent with an affecting eloquence.

Framing these are two versions of the piano piece Processional (1983). The former is played by its dedicatee, Gilbert Kalish, with typical dynamism and panache; the latter by Marcantonio Barone with greater fleetness and a recourse to ‘extended piano effects’, which impart a more distanced if no less tangible atmosphere to music that is hieratic in the most involving sense.

Steven Osborne’s luminous and Robert Shannon’s commanding accounts of Processional are among the highlights of the Crumb discography, as also are Rohan de Saram’s long-breathed and Matt Haimovitz’s lucidly poised readings of the Sonata. Yet no one with even passing interest in Crumb should be without the present release – which, with its spaciously immediate sound and detailed notes by Crumb authority Steven Bruns, fittingly rounds off this journey through a life. The composer, happily able to attend the sessions, was clearly gratified with the result.