A child prodigy whose career as a concert pianist was cut short by injury, Stanisław Skrowaczewski (1923-2017) made his career as a conductor. To celebrate his centenary a dozen of his compatriots have joined forces to present a selection of his chamber music.

A student of Nadia Boulanger in the late 1940s, he ‘became interested in the assumptions of the musical avant-garde’, as the booklet notes inform us; but the music reveals something more conservative, nearer to Berg than to Boulez. The four pieces recorded here were composed between 1984 and 1998. The last, Musica a quattro, commissioned to celebrate Skrowaczewski’s 75th birthday, is the most substantial and accomplished. The way that the clarinet stands apart from the string trio’s argument while contributing something essential is evident from the off, and betrays something more than the conductor’s skill in writing for instruments. The remaining pieces, all titled Fantasie and conceived as a series of episodes, seem slighter than Musica: the composer’s fondness for exchanging melodic fragments between instruments, and downwards gestures treated as sequences, becomes very familiar by the end. The performances are never less than committed and sympathetic; had the three earlier pieces been as convincing as the last, that favourable impression would have been even stronger.

I’ve alluded to the booklet notes above. Given that Skrowaczewski’s work as a composer is hardly well known, it’s fair to say that they miss a trick; for while his career is related at some length, nothing is said of the individual pieces, even though individual details (such as the simultaneous use of playing and singing in the flute part of the Fantasie per tre) might easily call for comment, especially for listeners who may be unaware of such things. Though the performers undoubtedly deserve credit for their enterprise, surely more space could have been found for the music.