‘Silfra’, described in Hilary Hahn and Volker Bertelmann’s booklet-notes as ‘the culmination of a two-year exploratory improvisation project’, serves up a sequence of rather colourless and characterless mood-music pieces which, far from engaging with what improvisation does best – ie listening inside patterns, promoting thinking about reflex clichés of technique with a view to breaking them down – only cuts as deeply as evoking picture-postcard soundscapes.

That some of these tracks sound vaguely chilly, icy and cool is easily explained. ‘Silfra’ was recorded in Iceland and, as Hahn explains, this change of scene ‘gave us the freedom and independence to explore’. The first piece, ‘Stillness’, hardly bodes well though. Through an ambient mush of what sounds like studio-filtered drones, a sustained violin line emerges that soon falls back on generic melodic hooks. There’s something ingratiating about Hahn’s soft-core tone, as if making people focus on her undeniably flawless legato might deflect a wider truth: improvisation, I think not, the spontaneous reordering of stock responses, yes.

Volker Bertelmann – the German prepared-piano meister who normally trades under the moniker Hauschka – might be hoped to jolt this project out of its inertia. But ‘Clock Winder’ only identifies another undermining problem. As Bertelmann’s fingers hover around fey harmonic sequences patented by Keith Jarrett 30 years ago, there’s no place for Hahn to go. He shuts options down and the piece feels correspondingly tentative and under-formed.

Other pieces note-spin around doodled violin arpeggios, while the longest track, ‘Godot’, is in essence a boring catalogue of effects without any structural backbone. But readers might be heartened to know that another, better example of Hahn improvising exists. In one of her insightful YouTube videos she hits a piano and cymbal. ‘That’s contemporary music!’ she giggles. But – prepare thee for the sad truth – I’d much rather listen to those randomly generated sounds than anything on ‘Silfra’. At least Hahn let those sounds be sounds.