Here is a welcome follow-up to Barcelona 216’s earlier Stradivarius disc of chamber works by Roberto Gerhard (1/98). While the compositions on that disc spanned Gerhard’s entire career, this one focuses on the remarkably fruitful 15 years with which it ended. It’s a satisfying programme, excellently performed, and recorded with due attention to the music’s pungent colours and innovative instrumental balances.

In the Nonet for wind and brass octet and accordion (1956-57) the compatibility between serialism and neo-classicism which Gerhard took over from his teacher Schoenberg is much in evidence. Although the slow start to the first movement may be rather austere, once the main part of the movement is launched Gerhard expertly avoids predictability through rhythmic contrast and textural variety, in music of considerable elegance and wit. But the two later scores are more flexibly designed and stronger in thematic character, and in Hymnody (1963) there are passages of such dramatic intensity you suspect that the later Gerhard – whose last stage work was his version of Sheridan’s The Duenna (1947-49, with revisions in the 1950s) – was, above all, a frustrated opera composer.

Hymnody alludes to the Psalms, and proceeds by alternations between relatively calm and turbulent material which suggest the emotional extremes of the biblical texts. The unusual scoring, with a wind septet set alongside two pianos and percussion (two players) inspires some rather melodramatic piano writing in the early stages, but this proves to be an absorbing work of powerful expressive command.

Leo (1969) – Gerhard’s last completed score – has an even stronger appeal, not only in its thematic character, but in its scherzo-like volatility, admirably realised in this performance. It has been available for some time on the Largo disc of Gerhard’s instrumental music listed above, but this new version is now the one to have. Leo may be Gerhard’s swansong, but its quiet citation of a (probably Peruvian) folk tune at the end – echoing the slightly earlier Libra – is delightfully understated. Neither overt nostalgia nor lamenting self-pity were Gerhard’s way, and all three works provide salutary reminders of the kind of strong musical thinking that was such a positive feature of the 1950s and ’60s.