If, in Boulez’s Pli selon pli, you’ve ever wanted those bewitchingly beautiful chords to last longer than a couple of seconds, this disc is for you. Dérives, Gérard Grisey’s breakthrough orchestral work, comprises one such timbrally rich, harmonically complex chord stretched out for the best part of half an hour. Whence flowed a genre, spectral music, which has remained influential since.

After appearing on an Erato LP in 1981, Dérives surprisingly never had any subsequent recordings, and it had to wait until 2016 for its UK premiere. For those of us used to the crackly vinyl recording, the WDR Symphony Orchestra in high definition presents a treasure of details: a rustic accordion playing upward scales amid a sea of erudite violin glissandos; chiming, clanging percussion breaking a long tutti silence; and at the end, the crescendo of a spectral orchestral chord, the journey’s ‘home’, as rumbling double bass blends with pedal bass clarinet above which harmonic partials shimmer in bright strings and winds. If Dérives was a new generation stretching its limbs confidently after boredom with pointillist serialism, Debussy is a reference, too, whose music Grisey studied in Messiaen’s composition class.

The disc’s other two works are from opposite ends of Grisey’s too-short career (he died at 52 of an aneurysm). Mégalithes for brass ensemble, a student work receiving its premiere recording, basks in absurdist Stockhausenean spectacle. Low tuba blurts and high trombone hiccups seem to be calling and responding, and although it’s not idiomatic of what Grisey did later, it’s accomplished stuff. L’icône paradoxale (the name refers to Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto) was the first work in which Grisey composed extensively for solo voice, a step towards the operas that sadly never came. Here, as time slows down and speeds up, Katrien Baerts and Kora Pavelic´ sensually and sensitively blend their voices with the instrumental sound. My final word goes to Bastille’s production team, who have compiled a wonderful package of photos, score sketches, interviews and notes in this essential release.