Oliver Davis is a lucky man. He enjoys the freedom to write whatever he wishes and has released a new album called ‘Liberty’ to celebrate the fact. He’s also fortunate in being able to call once more on an accomplished set of musicians – among them the violinist Kerenza Peacock, pianist Huw Watkins, cellist Katherine Jenkinson and soprano Grace Davidson – to show off his music in such a positive light.

Yet, despite the fizz and sparkle that comes across so clearly in these performances, ‘Liberty’ struggles to find moments of real musical substance. Davis has a keen eye for catchy tunes, dancelike rhythms and pleasant tonal patterns while possessing all the skills of a very gifted orchestrator in managing to blend each element into a coherent whole. But there’s something missing. The most effective moments appear in the atmospheric Sonar and impressive Chillingham – the latter comprising settings of three poems of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge wherein Grace Davidson inflects a whole range of beautiful shadings to her multitracked voice. It’s perhaps telling that Davis is at his most original when either bringing elements of technology to bear on the recording process or when writing with the character of a specific performer in mind, as he managed to do so impressively with Peacock’s violin on the 2016 release ‘Dance’.

‘Liberty’ comes across mostly as either a set of glorified film cues (nothing lasts over five minutes) or, worse still, as a series of generic music library samples. Not that there’s anything wrong with library music, of course, but one should perhaps expect more when it’s being passed off as concert music in the form of ‘cello concerto’ and the like. Freedom isn’t always a guarantee of quality. As Stravinsky himself is purported to have said: ‘The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free.’ Davis should take note.