The concept behind this intriguing, delightfully played programme is the development of the British wind quintet decade by decade from 1963 to 2010. The result is a richly varied sextet of pieces, but with no stylistic extremes – so no place for Lutyens’s Quintet (1960) or Birtwistle’s Refrains and Choruses (1957, admittedly) or Five Distances (1992), for example. Lutyens’s Quintet would have deepened the range of repertoire, though the selected starting point – William Mathias’s bright-toned Quintet, written just three years later – does perhaps make a more engaging opener, despite a slightly run of the-mill finale.

Oliver Knussen’s Three Little Fantasies (1970, rev 1983) may be the slightest in duration of the featured works (less than seven minutes in full) but size, as they say, isn’t everything. Exquisitely crafted gems, ‘concentrated in manner and light in effect’ in the composer’s succinct assessment, it was written for the Dutch Van Halsum Ensemble and revised 13 years later for the London Sinfonietta. It is followed by Elizabeth Maconchy’s masterly Quintet (1980), astonishingly receiving here its first recording. Maconchy is – justly – renowned for her string quartets and vocal settings but her writing for wind instruments was as effective as that of any of her peers. The fast-slow-fast-slow-fast format works brilliantly, and the concluding Rondo is a gem.

Scarcely less accomplished is Thea Musgrave’s single-movement Quintet (1992), its drammatico and elegiaco central sections – separated by an ‘anarchic cadenza’ – framed by an Andante espressivo recapitulated at the close. Its concentrated, abstract discourse and expressive rigour amount to rather more than Sally Beamish’s undeniably attractive suite (2000), each movement dominated by one of the five instruments and preceded by a brief recording of the endangered bird being named: partridge, lapwing, linnet, barn owl and bullfinch. Gavin Higgins’s sombre After Fallout … (2010) brings us into the new millennium with another concentrated single-span work. As with the Maconchy and Beamish, this is its first recording. The Lumas Quintet, formed by ex-students from the Royal Academy and College of Music in London, perform each work with élan and Champs Hill’s sound is first-rate.