Another Estonian whose music often falls under the radar is Jaan Rääts (b1932). A near-contemporary of Pärt, Rääts’s music is about as far removed from Pärt’s austere spiritualism as one might get. His Kaleidoscopic Études for clarinet, cello and piano, recorded here for the first time, is in many ways textbook Rääts: a highly colourful blend of rhythmically propelled repetition and pinball-effect polystylism. Energetic and unpredictable, the Kaleidoscopic Études dart this way and that across an action-packed 14 minutes, held together by a rigid metric template that allows sudden stylistic ‘modulations’ – a distinctive hallmark of Rääts’s style – to take place. One imagines in this music what Stravinsky might have written had he been born half a century later.

Certain parallels can be drawn with the work that closes the disc, Henryk Górecki’s Lerchenmusik recitatives and ariosos. Lasting over 40 minutes, each one of its three movements contains moments where the music shifts unexpectedly from quiet, still, barely audible expression to harsh, agitated and aggressive eruptions. But there the comparison ends. The playfulness of the Kaleidoscopic Études is replaced by a forbiddingly bleak and dark music, which is only checked by passages of mock-folk parody. The atmosphere is further intensified by Górecki’s ability to stretch out material to the threshold of tolerance and acceptability. It’s a powerful, sobering work.

In between the two lies a simple arrangement by Arvo Pärt of the slow (F minor) middle movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata K280, also for clarinet, cello and piano, which, other than a few harmonic tweaks, remains largely faithful to the original. Excellent performances are provided throughout by Messina, Demarquette and Chiovetta, their focused performances sharpening our vision of the kaleidoscopic music contained within.