This is the sixth volume of Bridge’s Complete Crumb Edition, with a mixed group of works written between 1964 and 1982. The oldest recording, from 1975, is a welcome reissue of the classic performance of Lux Aeterna (1971) with Jan DeGaetani, who was so often associated with Crumb’s vocal music. Crumb regarded this piece as a kind of ecumenical statement where various musics of the world came together. It includes a dance for sitar, recorder and tabla with a distinct Indian flavour – another example of apparently weird elements wandering into Crumb’s scores in an almost surrealist fashion. The pitch material is an extension of the kind of whole-tone scale found in Debussy, who is often in the background of Crumb’s own impressionism. A live performance begins and ends in darkness and has lighting effects.

The orchestral Echoes of Time and the River, subtitled ‘Four Processionals’, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1968. It has a rich range of sources in a spatial layout where the performers walk around. There are plenty of gongs, speaking voices, a mandolin, extended piano techniques and reference to a spiritual (end of the second movement and not the third, as claimed in the CD booklet). This is a characteristic Crumb mélange which survives the lack of theatrical effects missing on CD.

Gnomic Variations is a substantial 20-minute work and, like the Four Nocturnes for violin and piano, uses a very exacting range of piano techniques both inside and outside the instrument – capably delivered in both works by Robert Shannon. As Crumb’s only organ piece, Pastoral Drone is an interesting curiosity, where the two-note drone provides an archaic flavour. All adequately recorded and up to the high level of previous volumes.