Although Montage was a notable success at the 1977 Proms, Edwin Roxburgh is as well known as a composition teacher (he was on the staff at the Royal College of Music for many years, and directed its Twentieth-Century Ensemble) as a composer. This disc features two substantial orchestral works that give an insight into his distinctive and never unapproachable idiom.

The Clarinet Concerto (1995) falls into a half-hour single movement – its haunting initial idea the basis for what ensues and generating a natural momentum such as makes its development easy to follow. While this process of organic accumulation could perhaps have been telescoped more thoroughly during the first half, the intense central meditation and build-up to a climactic cadenza with percussion is impressively realised. Linda Merrick gives a confident and assured performance, and Roxburgh secures a committed response from the RNCM forces.

Taking its cue from images sent back by the Voyager II spacecraft, Saturn (1982) is a tone-poem depicting each of the planet’s nine satellites in a continuous sequence – enhanced by a subtle electronic presence – ranging from the textural interplay of ‘Mimas’ to the fugal density of ‘Dione’ and the sustained threnody of ‘Titan’. The constituents are then drawn (in a manner recalling Lutosðawski) into the culminating ‘Saturn’ movement, which drives to an exhilarating conclusion. The work’s considerable technical demands are met with relish by the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra and heard to advantage in sound with a greater spatial depth than that accorded the concerto. Brief but informative notes from the composer, and a fine introduction to Roxburgh’s music that has been too long in coming.