I welcomed Navona Records’ ninth disc devoted to the music of Michael G Cunningham (b1937) last May, archival recordings of chamber and instrumental pieces composed in 1969-72 when he was teaching at Indiana University. This new album features orchestral works written, with one exception, after that time in adroitly turned-out renditions from the Moravian and Janáček Philharmonic Orchestras, two of Navona’s Czech Republic-based house bands, recorded between June 2018 and March 2020.

Navona’s publicity suggests Cunningham’s works are ‘nestled in style between early Prokofiev and late Shostakovich’, a statement that does him no favours. There are influences and resonances of other composers here, for sure, as in the earliest work, Counter Currents (1966). Given here in its string-orchestral version, it sounds like a vivid, compelling essay from a composer who has listened to and learnt from Bernard Herrmann. Time Frame and TransActions (both 1980) are more advanced and edgy in tone, forming a contrasted pair of studies in sonority, whereas the two Impromptus (1999) – ‘Glimmerings’ and ‘Gambol’ – are more of a diptych.

TransActions appeared on an earlier Navona disc (‘Paragonia’, NV5982); so, too, have the Impromptus and Symphony No 7, paired on the mixed-composer ‘Dimensions, Vol 3’ (NV6311). The Symphony, subtitled here A Cummings Synchrony (but not so on the earlier disc), is inspired by four poems by EE Cummings, traversing the four elements – Wind, Fire, Rain and Earth – and designed to accompany recitations of the verses. If the definition of a symphony as ‘the large-scale integration of contrasts’ holds true, then these four brief atmospheric studies do not pass muster. A Bach Pre-Symphony is more engaging, a neat reworking of a trio sonata as a string-orchestral score, contrasting nicely with the arrangement for wind ensemble of the Fauré Nocturne. Navona’s sound is crisp and clear.