It would be hard and probably undesirable to pin any sort of label on the music of Laurent Lefrançois, the French composer born in 1974. Each of the pieces on this disc seems to be stylistically self-contained. There are nods to the milieu of Les Six and other French composers in the Sextuor mixte (2003) for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano, though the booklet-note writer points to the influence of Janáček. If that is so, it is a Janáček with a very pronounced Gallic accent, shot through with idioms and rhythmic cunning characteristic of propulsive minimalism.

Set against that, the Toccata sesta d’après Frescobaldi (2013) is a free arrangement for string quartet of an early-17th-century Frescobaldi organ miniature (about five minutes long), in which Lefrançois pays homage to Frescobaldi’s own originality in terms of harmony and free-flowing ideas rather than using it as a springboard for any modern embellishment. As Lefrançois says, ‘I refer to the past through appropriation and do not wish to make a clean sweep of everything I love. Rather than the iconoclastic acts favoured by the post-war serial school, I prefer securing my musical language to the works of all the masters I rub shoulders with every day through concerts or the study of scores.’ By contrast, however, Erinnerung (2007) for string quartet makes references to Mozart in the context of an at times Bartókian astringency. The variety here is engaging and the music’s virtuoso demands are fully met by the spirited performers.