This is a very welcome release indeed. Roger Smalley (1943-2015) is one of those British composers who have slipped beneath the radar; in large part this had to do with his move to Australia in 1977 but there is also the larger question of his stylistic metamorphosis, ably addressed in the booklet accompanying this disc in a brief essay by the pianist, Daniel Herscovitch.

One of the advantages of this collection, which consists with the exception of two pieces of first recordings, is precisely that it jumps about between the composer’s three ‘periods’, thus enabling the listener to discern the connecting threads between them. If I say that I might, at first listening, not have been able to guess that the composer of the song-cycle Nine Lives (2008) is the same as that of the magnificent Capriccio No 1 for violin and piano (1966), on further listenings it becomes ever more apparent that Smalley’s musical fluency transcends those three ‘periods’. This is a composer not only of great technical ability but one who knew musical history inside out, as another booklet essay, by Darryl Poulsen, makes clear. One suspects, in fact, that the lyrical quality of the Capriccio might have been quite shocking to the hard-line Darmstadt enthusiasts of that time; Poulsen’s recounting of Smalley’s delight in performing Brahms and Schumann underscores this.

And the composer’s subsequent stylistic ‘periods’ have everything to do with this, of course. The Barcarolle from 20 years later is by any account a masterly work but it is also a testimony to Smalley’s re-engagement with the musical past, and the way in which he continued along this path is magnificently demonstrated by the Morceau de concours from 22 years later still (2008). Morceau indeed! This is a major work and deserves to be widely known. And everything in this substantial piece is heard in joyous embryo in the Piano Pieces I V from 1962 65.

At the risk of exhausting my stock of adjectives, I am bound to say that the saving of Three Studies in Black and White (2002 04) and Lament for the Victims of Natural Disasters (2005) until the end of the disc was truly inspired. The Three Studies constitute a major work (as so often with Smalley, the title does not do justice to the music’s range and depth), and the haunting Lament, scored for horn and four tam-tams, is perhaps the composer at his most Australian.

This magnificent disc alerts us not only to the importance of a composer both British and Australian but to a significant voice in contemporary music in a wider sense. I sincerely hope that this recording, of performances of the highest order, will be the beginning of a revival of the work of a composer of staggering talent and sublime inspiration.