He may be best known through his sizeable output for film and television but a recent trilogy of concertos for the oboe family (11/20) confirmed Christopher Tyler Nickel (b1978) as no slouch when it comes to writing music for the concert hall. This impression is amply reinforced by the Second Symphony, which, composed during 2016-17 then revised the following year, tackles head-on this most historically resonant of genres. The result is a single movement of almost 55 minutes in duration, lacking little in ambition as it confronts the weightiest issues.

As the composer recalls, the symphony’s original conception lasted around 90 minutes and required substantial rewriting to endow it with both formal clarity and expressive consistency. Neither quality is lacking in what is heard here, this underlying cohesion the more remarkable given its mainly slow tempos and any refusal to indulge in variety for variety’s sake. Precedents in the Austro-German tradition are more apparent than real; a more relevant antecedent is the Swedish composer Allan Pettersson, whose predilection for lengthy one-movement structures – building incrementally through fractious emotional contrasts towards a conclusion hardly guaranteed of repose – is evident, together with melodic lines that evolve over wide-spaced textures and a conflict between tonalities that results in what is termed ‘cognitive dissonance’.

Whether or not Nickel makes comparable demands on one’s attention or stamina, there can be no doubting the intent of his musical vision or of the commitment that the Northwest Sinfonia has invested into this music under the assured direction of Clyde Mitchell – heard to advantage in a spacious but never unfocused acoustic. The decision whether to end the piece ‘with a thunderous close or to fade out enigmatically’ was only resolved on the night of the premiere: listeners must judge for themselves if the composer’s decision was the right one.