Now in his early 60s, British composer Michael Zev Gordon shares with his near-contemporaries George Benjamin and Julian Anderson an acute sensitivity to the interdependence of words and music, something never more elusive than when the music is purely instrumental. The three non-vocal compositions on this new album trace an evolutionary path across eight years – 2009 to 2017 – in which changes of style embody the governing principle of constant impermanence. In his booklet note Zev Gordon underlines his understanding of the issue, challenging the convenient coverall notion of ‘postmodern’ with the eminently justifiable claim that ‘my music is far from the detached playfulness often associated with this term’. He may have in mind the laid-back, downtown aura of American Bang on a Can composers such as his near-namesake Michael Gordon, and the range of associations with pre-20th‑century music on which Zev Gordon himself draws is one very palpable difference, well conveyed in the differently sourced recordings brought together here. In particular, the composer instances the ‘tender melancholy’ he finds in Schumann, and which pervades the earliest work on the disc, The Impermanence of Things (2009) for piano, large ensemble and electronics.

Times have certainly changed since 2009, and this beguiling sequence of 13 miniatures not only involves a wide range of musical associations beyond and behind Schumann but attaches movement titles referencing the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: tiny, often gnomic homilies such as ‘Learn to forget that passionate music’ and ‘Every angel is terrifying’. The music is also extremely successful in erasing the expansive, romantic lyricism that might evoke Schumann and others more directly; and although it’s possible to sense various affinities with Zev Gordon’s teachers and mentors – Robin Holloway, Oliver Knussen, Louis Andriessen, perhaps – The Impermanence of Things treads its own delicate path with subtle sonic textures that are all the more effective for the occasional eruption of more assertive materials.

Three years later, Bohortha: Seven Pieces for Orchestra (2012) continues the skilfully balanced sequencing of evocatively titled miniatures – ‘Broken Pieces’, ‘Terrifying Angel’ – to evoke and celebrate the Cornish location of its title. Larger forces mean less of the relative austerity that made such a positive contribution to The Impermanence of Things, and austerity might seem in full retreat in the Violin Concerto (2017), which, as annotator John Fallas observes, ‘is constructed more traditionally and privileges continuity over fragmentation’. For a composer of modernist predispositions, there is an almost experimental quality to the fervent rhetoric of shifting moods and colours here, and more than enough energy and animation to make the possible future release of recordings of Zev Gordon’s music since 2017 an appealing prospect.