With Mark-Anthony Turnage now associate composer of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin working for Chandos, this cornucopia of first recordings is not entirely unexpected. Even so, the line-up is really quite startling, with guest appearances from several world-renowned soloists. Sonically, too, the experienced Couzens production team strike sparks.

While one expects plenty of atmosphere from this source, the effect is unexpectedly tight and punchy (the venue is Walthamstow Town Hall). All the same, I am not sure that the bill of fare is best swallowed whole. As so often with this composer, the invention is viscerally immediate; only these are pieces which have taken some time to find their definitive form – the synthesis of jazz and classical elements can wear thin over nearly an hour’s playing time.

I have no doubts about the first two offerings. Another Set To (2000) may be a relatively conventional display piece, less harmonically adventurous than some Turnage and steering clear of his lyrical vein. What matters is that it comes off sensationally here: the composer has found an ideal protagonist in Christian Lindberg, his tone gloriously full however jagged and edgy the writing. It isn’t just the sensitive recording balance which allows him to soar over an orchestra in (carefully calculated) full cry. This is exhilarating stuff, not a million miles from Steve Martland territory.

Silent Cities (1998) is rather different in scope and intent, anything but upbeat. Turnage has written several pieces inspired by the carnage of the Somme in which a sense of battlefield topography survives. This one, stark and self-evidently deeply felt, forms a pendant to the opera The Silver Tassie, from which it borrows two key interludes. It is dedicated to the memory of Sir Michael Tippett, himself a pacifist, although the generative idea is lifted from a jazz theme composed by John Scofield.

Four-Horned Fandango (1995-96, revised 2000) convinces me less, even in this revision. The première of the original version featured the horn section of the City of Birmingham Symphony for whom Julian Anderson, the CBSO’s current composer-in-association, recently tailored his own Imagin’d Corners. Turnage begins impressively with dark and ghostly slitherings (Ravel’s La valse meets Tippett’s Triple Concerto?), but the subsequent blasting away of the horns sits oddly with the limp Spanishry of the fandango allusions, and even the string writing occasionally sounds uncomfortable. The tinkly, gleaming coda offers belated relief.

Fractured Lines has also taken a while to come into focus. Asked by the BBC to write a percussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie, Turnage decided to pit her classically-based gestural bravura against Peter Erskine’s laid-back jazz instincts. Reworked, it seems a tighter, less abrasive and considerably shorter piece than it did at the 2000 Proms. You may lose the theatrics on CD but the spatial aspect is well conveyed.

A mixed bag then, though aficionados will know not to hesitate and the first half of the programme is unambiguously terrific.