The disc gets off to an uncompromising start with Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre (1958), its unanimity of attack and minimal vibrato denoting a tensile response that yet feels constricted in a stealthily cumulative central section whose climax really needs a larger body of strings to do justice to its wrenching dissonance. That the Polish composer remains a potent influence is evident in Réponse Lutosławski (2014) by Bryce Dessner – the sometime guitarist of The National, already with a notable orchestral disc to his name (DG, 5/14), focusing on salient aspects of his predecessor’s idiom in a (too?) substantial five-movement piece that only fully convinces in the inward poise of its ‘Preludio’ and crepuscular textures of ‘Warsaw Canon’.

Most memorable are those pieces in between. Simon Rowland-Jones (no mean composer in his own right) is the eloquent soloist in Ulysses Awakes (1984), John Woolrich’s thoughtful recasting of an aria from Monteverdi’s opera with the vocal line sounding the more plangent on viola against a haunting backdrop of strings. Taking its cue from a deceptively restrained poem by Paul Verlaine, Kate Whitley’s Autumn Songs (2014) duly reaffirms the favourable impression of her ‘portrait’ disc (NMC, 5/17) – its coruscating skeins of sound taking on an ethereal rapture before resuming their emotionally impervious course during the final bars.

12 Ensemble render the entire programme with fearless resolve, abetted by the immediate sound balance, while principal cellist Max Ruisi contributes succinctly informative notes. An impressive debut, then; were this group to take on some extra ‘guest’ players, a coupling of Lutosławski’s Preludes and Fugue with Nicholas Maw’s Life Studies is there for the making.