Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio enjoyed a close working association from their early years in the often fractious post-war avant-garde, and their later work offers intriguing parallels in the sustaining of a musical span without the bedrock of tonal relationships. The pieces collated here are additionally connected in being arrangements championed by saxophonist Vincent David, whose pliant and incisive tone is a central feature of this disc. Berio’s Chemins IV (1975) possesses an airborne intensity, while Récit (Chemins VII, 1995) typifies the diverse interplay of soloist and ensemble from Berio’s later concertante works – a dynamism that is absent from Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double (1985), whose timbral exploration of clarinet with its electronic “double” is coarsened when transferred to saxophone, for all the dexterity of David’s playing.

Interspersed are three groups comprising 14 of the 34 Duos for two violins that Berio wrote in the early 1980s, ostensibly as teaching pieces. Arranged for pairs of soprano or alto saxophones, or one of either with violin, they exude an engaging candour, Berio alluding to his predecessors (notably Bartók) and contemporaries in music that places his own compositional concerns into sharp relief.

Webern’s Quartet (1930) may be an unlikely conclusion but its lucid discourse for an unlikely line-up takes in procedures from both classical and modern (specifically jazz) ensembles that the two younger composers drew upon. Excellent sound (its immediacy typical of IRCAM’s Espace de Projection) and informative notes enhance the attractions of this well planned and, for the most part, successfully realised programme.