His music doesn’t fit in anywhere, which is how Edwin Roxburgh likes it. Now 72, Roxburgh is among a handful of British composers of his generation to engage properly with new music in central Europe. The essential sound world of these pieces rebounds out of ripples created by the 1950s European avantgarde: Roxburgh is big on multiphonics and intricate harmonic overblowing, the sort of techniques he experienced at first hand in his performing career, playing pioneering oboe works such as Berio’s Sequenza VII and Holliger’s Cardiophonie.

But something else about Roxburgh’s music is quintessentially British. Perhaps it’s those resistant traces of pastoral landscaping in his gestures, or the deeply embedded melancholy of his melodic lines. For Christopher Redgate on Metier, Roxburgh’s music is allied directly to a lineage of modernist Brits perched somewhere between Elisabeth Lutyens and Brian Ferneyhough, a connection not so explicitly spelt out on Paul Goodey’s Oboe Classics disc. Both recordings include Antares, Aulodie and the ensemble Elegy, but the performances are so distinct that both discs are ripe for a punt.

For super-human technical slickness, Redgate has it sewn up. Eclissi for oboe and string trio is a study in evolving multiphonics and fluttertonguing textures. Redgate dives deep inside the music – the techniques are so instinctively under his fingers he can forget about the notes – where he finds profound geometric beauty within Roxburgh’s sculptural shapes, especially towards the conclusion as the oboe morphs inside the string timbre. Redgate is also a considered player of lines: he takes “Ariadne’s Thread”, the final section of Aulodie, at a slower tempo than Goodey, and the ebbs and flows of the piano accompaniment sound intriguingly “once removed” as Redgate walks Roxburgh’s snaking line with deft poise.

The high-point of the Oboe Classics set is Shadow Play (1984) for two oboes and cor anglais, in which Roxburgh builds a counterpoint from overlaid multiphonics, and the choir of three oboists pursue a beautifully heard performance. Elegy gets a more secure performance on the Metier disc. At 16 minutes verses 12 minutes, there is more scope for air to breathe through its knotty textures.