Sergio Cervetti (b1940) is an American composer but his origins lie in Uruguay. He was a pupil of Krenek, among others, at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, graduating in 1967. Since then, Cervetti has distinguished himself in various professorial roles in the same city, and composed more than 150 works ranging from opera and vocal works to chamber, instrumental and electronic music.

Et in Arcadia ego (2017) is a fine example of his output, a bracing symphonic poem inspired by both Martín García Island in the River Plate between Argentina and Uruguay, and Poussin’s famous – and elusive – painting The Shepherds of Arcadia. Cervetti’s idiom should appeal to anyone who responds positively to the music of, say, Nicholas Maw, Rautavaara, Christopher Rouse or Detlev Glanert, though the music does not sound remotely like theirs, of course (or even overtly Latin American). Cervetti has a vivid orchestral imagination and the knack of getting his ideas and their developments down on paper. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, strongly directed by Petr Vronsk≥, succeed in bringing all three works to life in finely shaped performances (one or two intonational issues aside).

Consolamentum (2016) and the much earlier Plexus (1970, but much revised in 2016), are quite different in expressive and textural profile. Where Et in Arcadia ego is a volatile score, teeming with life, Consolamentum – written, like John Buller’s Proença, as a homage to the Cathars of medieval Languedoc – builds gradually through its quarter-hour timespan to an intense climax. Plexus is a touch shorter and started life as a ‘semi-graphic’ composition with texts spoken by orchestral members; Cervetti’s new version is purely and compellingly orchestral. Very good sound.