If you don’t want to know about the scientific plotting behind this music, look away now (skip to the next paragraph). In a kind of short-circuiting of so many principles we associate with experimental music, the Danish composer Lars Graugaard has used computer software to determine what specifics of scoring (including performance directions) prompt the readiest of emotional responses in humans. The result is music ‘steered through real emotions…perceivable by the listener’, according to a booklet-note by Alejandro Guarello. A dangerous game: undermining one’s credentials with just about every faction of compositional thought bar commercial pop?

But while experimental music can be more concerned with process than result, the fruits of Graugaard’s experiments (and we have to take Guarello’s word for what those experiments consists of) sound…well, quite pleasing to the ear, mostly due to the clarity of the gestures. But there’s more at play besides: the power-loss (this a conscious feature) in Venus is aurally fascinating and neatly scored; the geometric patterning of Layers of Earth has a certain delicacy; Three Places underlines Graugaard’s keen ear for instrumental sonority.

Book of Throws takes the concept further, including a fully improvised solo piano part played against a notated score that the pianist isn’t to have seen or heard previously (thus it can’t be performed by the same pianist twice). It’s reactive and organic to an extent, but a certain stasis creeps in too; here and elsewhere, those ‘emotions’ can feel contained (and yes, pre-ordained), missing rawness and spontaneity even in improvisation. Impressive performances from talented New York students and their dedicated professors; but I do wonder how differently I’d have reacted had I not known of the science behind the scores.