Milton Babbitt has long claimed that his most famous title, Who Cares If You Listen?, was not his original heading but a last minute addition by an intrusive editor. But since Babbitt has given us such provocative titles of his own – for example, My Ends Are My Beginnings, a 1978 composition for solo clarinet as prickly in its own right as the composer’s famous essay – such distinctions seem like splitting hairs.

In music this rigorously constructed, however, hair-splitting remains a viable vocation. The five works on this collection span 25 years and while clearly meant to be relatively easy on the ears, still give even newcomers to the Babbitt world a sense of what the fuss has been about.

Cliché though it may be to say, you must approach this music using its own standards; for someone who has gone great lengths to rethink music from its foundation this cannot be stressed often enough. From the opening Quatrains (1993) we find a composer who treats the voice on instrumental terms. In Manifold Music (1995) for solo organ, the instrument is bandied about in a most un-organlike manner.

A particular strength of this collection is that the pieces are mostly performed by the original dedicatees, who have had the most time to grow into them. We are clearly in good hands with clarinettist Allen Blustine in My Ends Are My Beginnings (with its cheeky invocation of Machaut), as well as guitarists William Anderson and Oren Fader in Soli e Duettini.

The most intriguing piece, though, is the most recent. Babbitt’s Swan Song No 1 (2003) not only reconceives inter-relationships among his potentially unwieldy consort (flute, oboe, mandolin, guitar, violin and cello), but he again strikes gold with the title. With cheeky references not only to the dedicatees (the Cygnus Ensemble), but to his age (87!), Babbitt gives us his ‘swan song’ while leaving the door open, a clear clue us not to take anything here purely at face value.