Michael Fine may not be familiar to many as a composer but for three decades he worked very successfully as a record producer for some of the industry’s biggest names. Then in 2013, aged 63, Fine turned his hand to composition, since when he has amassed a significant body of works. To date, these have included several concertos, a suite for strings, three string quartets, a chamber concerto, and – as the title of this disc indicates – five compositions for solo wind instrument and string quartet written between 2015 and 2018.

Fine has cited Debussy, Ravel, Delius and Vaughan Williams as important influences. Add to the list Britten, Shostakovich and middle-period Stravinsky and a picture soon emerges of a composer, style and aesthetic rooted in the neoclassical past. One need look no further than the sprightly opening of his impressive Quintet for bassoon and strings for evidence – solo instrument vigorously darting about in its high tenor range, playfully coaxing the string accompaniment into a game of call-and-response. Graceful shapes and flowing lines feature in the Quintet for flute and string quartet, with both works benefiting from assured performances by Alice K Dade and Fei Xie on flute and bassoon respectively.

At other times, however, Fine’s neo-tonal style seems to get caught in its own self-generating web of musical ebb and flow – lines spinning around without any clear aim or purpose. The Quintet for oboe and string quartet starts assertively enough but soon runs its course before the arrival of the final dancelike movement – the thematic material having by then collapsed under the weight of an overextended structure. Fine has stated that his intention is to ‘write the music I want to hear’, which is certainly solid advice for any composer, but one sometimes wonders whether Fine’s compositions reflect the exacting standards and values applied by him during his time as music producer. For all its colour and surface appeal, Fine’s music resembles what Scott Messing (quoting the French critic Jean Marnold) describes as ‘neoclassic chloroform’ – a musical aesthetic that actually ends up being an aural anaesthetic.