Sergio Assad’s three-movement Aquarelle is perhaps the most substantial work on the disc, its smoothly modulated intensity deriving as much from rigorous motivic transformation and relative tonal stability as from its flirting with different stylistic registers. The sometimes violent contrasts of mood in Francis Kleynjans’s Tárrega tribute Arabesque en forme de caprice also bring a watercolour to mind, but one emboldened by gouache.

The same could be said for Stephen Goss’s finely crafted El llanto de los sueños, of which the central “Madrugada” is especially delicate and evocative. Violent contrasts also characterise Ben Verdery’s Now and Ever, the extreme rigour of the writing recalling the first movement of the Assad; and of Philip Rosheger’s three short and relatively insubstantial works the Good Luck Waltz is the best, bringing to mind the more virtuoso of Lauro’s waltzes with its busy, exuberant writing.

To all these Russell brings a confident, muscular musicality tempered by an unsentimental yet highly expressive approach to phrasing and dynamics – though such qualities are most obvious in the Assad and some sections of the Goss and the Verdery, the Kleynjans and the Rosheger providing slightly less to sink the interpretative teeth into. Telarc’s superlative sound is just that, while the accompanying booklet contains brief biographical notes on, and commentaries written by, each composer.