This disc supplements the recent BIS release of instrumental music by Sofia Gubaidulina (A/14). So sei es – a 20-minute composition for violin and double bass with piano and percussion (2013) – has obvious affinities with the later pieces on the earlier disc. But its relatively diffuse character perhaps reflects its role as a memorial to Viktor Suslin, with whom Gubaidulina worked in both the Soviet Union and Germany as part of an ensemble dedicated to group improvisation.

Suslin (1942-2012) seems to have been publisher, performer and professor as well as composer, a diversity which might explain the unusual mix of the experimental and the conventional in his music. Forays towards the microtonal aspects of spectralism are set against what sounds like an impatience with minimalism’s jovial consonances, which Suslin felt obliged to satirise. The mix doesn’t always come off: the strenuously repetitive Grenzübertritt outstays its welcome and the Sonata capricciosa fizzles out in rather aimless reticence. However, 1756 for solo violin celebrates the lost world of melancholic Mozartian refinement without implying wholesale rejection of the possibilities inherent in musical modernism, managing thereby to match some of Schnittke’s and Guibaidulina’s most memorable works; two other Suslin pieces, Mobilis and Capriccio über die Abreise, come across no less effectively.

As for the acceptance of fate implied by Gubaidulina’s title – ‘so be it’ – submissiveness doesn’t prevent the music abandoning reflective lyricism for explosive assertiveness from time to time. That the double-bass player is Viktor Suslin’s son adds pertinence to the performance, and the whole disc is well projected, especially by violinist Nurit Stark, in strongly etched recordings.