At the heart of this disc are the 12 canons for violin and guitar whimsically titled Schrödinger’s Cat; whimsically, because Ruders has admitted that the music has nothing to do with the famous 1935 thought experiment, but that he always wanted to use the title anyway. In his essay, the much-missed Malcolm MacDonald suggests that the canons nevertheless fit Schrödinger’s paradox rather well conceptually. Be that as it may, the music appeals not so much through its undeniable technical ingenuity as through its constantly self-renewing rhythmic, timbral and textural imagination. Much of it nods towards Stravinsky (The Soldier’s Tale, the Violin Concerto, Agon and so on). The final canon, in an unexpectedly pure D major, itself opens on to the six Romances, avowed tributes to the 19th-century character-piece genre but ones that retain an enigmatic core and could be illuminatingly programmed alongside, say, Schumann’s Märchenbilder.

The Thirteen Postludes for piano are perhaps a little surprising in their uncompromising edginess. If anything they feel more abstract than the canons of Schrödinger’s Cat. But, hearing the disc as a recital, by this stage the ear is well attuned. David Holzman rips with panache through the short but searing ‘Toccata’ (No 3), the equally lacerating ‘Preambulum’ (No 8) and ‘Manège’ (No 11). These feel like both a necessary physical release from and a provocation to the austere intellectual fancies that surround them. Even so, the isolated Piano Etude No 2 – Prokofiev meets Messiaen – is the one piano piece I found myself most drawn to investigating further.

A special bouquet to David Starobin for his performances in the two guitar works, of which he is the dedicatee. Nothing in the programme is more captivating than the five-movement theatre of the mind that is the New Rochelle Suite. This, like everything on the disc, is delivered with refinement, precision and energy, and recordings throughout are beautifully focused.