There’s a post-Nietzschean agenda to this programme, according to Paul Griffiths’s booklet note, but neither Gubaidulina nor Schnittke, for example, would recognise the idea of the ‘death of God’. So it’s more complex than this idea implies, and, I would suggest, actually more interesting.

Brett Dean’s Voices of Angels is a very substantial work, making his customary detailed sonic investigations into the ensemble’s possible combinations of instruments, and doing so with a tremendous sense of drama. Its two movements come in at around 28 minutes: it’s a significant addition to the chamber literature. Gubaidulina’s Ein Engel, a setting of Else Lasker-Schüler for mezzo-soprano and double bass, similarly arises from near-inaudibility, and the composer, like Dean, has always been similarly interested in sonority as a structural component (and, it must be said, as a spiritual symbol). What is particularly interesting here is the way the double bass is left to take over from the voice later in the piece, as though they were two aspects of a single voice.

The two Rachmaninov songs included, beautifully sung though they are by Christianne Stotijn, may seem to be odd choices for a programme such as this but in fact they convey atmospheres that seem to continue those of the contemporary works. Gubaidulina’s unpredictable and buzzing Meditation über den Choral is followed by Wagner’s song ‘Der Engel’, which really is a stylistic shock, but thematically it is of course perfectly integrated. To end with the second of Schnittke’s instrumental Hymns is inspired. It brings together both the aspects of spiritual exploration and sonic research found here, and the idea of the chorale. And on the subject of sound, the recording is wonderfully clear, doing full justice to these powerful performances which range over the full dynamic spectrum.