I suspect that the six works featured here would be unlikely items in most selections of vintage Americana. All credit to Christina Petrowska Quilico for an intelligent programme that, to greater or lesser degrees, is vintage. The best-known of the pieces is Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism No 6 (1970), a Pulitzer Prize-winner in 1971 and the one with the most extensive presence in the catalogue, this being the fifth recording I am aware of.

Quilico’s performance of Synchronism is compelling, the touch and tone of a performance of a 19th-century masterwork applied to this typical piece of 1970s avant-garderie. Listen past the outward stylistic trappings, however, and the poetry in Davidovsky’s writing comes to the fore, more so than in the rival accounts. Her approach pays more obvious dividends in the purely acoustic works, Lowell Liebermann’s four Apparitions (1985) in particular. Quilico’s accounts compare favourably in my view with the composer’s own, available from Steinway Classics. David Del Tredici’s Fantasy Pieces (1959; I am not aware of any Alice connection here) are among his earliest available works, nicely interpreted.

The largest composition is Rzewski’s The Turtle and the Crane (1988), a pristine, often brittle-seeming fantasia – inspired by the eponymous Kyoto garden – designed ‘to encourage women’. In many respects, it is the most advanced work here, notwithstanding the vibrant electronic components of David Jaeger’s Quivi sospiri (‘I can sleep’, 1979) and Paul Huebner’s freewheeling Ocotillo (named from the semi-succulent desert plant). Both composers assisted in realising the electronic part for these live performances. Navona’s remarkably good sound balances the acoustic and electronic elements well (and the different recording dates and venues), adjusting the acoustical picture as necessary for each piece. Challenging repertoire, well worth investigating.