Although he has worked across various genres, the concert music of Gary Carpenter has been neglected on disc and this wide-ranging release confirms his humour is seldom without more serious intent. Thus the dispersal of energy in Da capo (1981) towards what might be either accord or stalemate, or the ironic take on Mozart in Ein musikalisches Snookerspiel (1991) – a delicious bicentennial tribute from a time when postmodernism was still an incitement rather than an excuse. Like Satie or Cage, Carpenter is alive to the role of the everyday in creativity: his years spent as repetiteur at Krefeld gave rise to Die Flimmerkiste (1983), in which two volumes of ingenious thumbnail portraits of his colleagues there frame the depiction of a fairground with its ricocheting exchanges between wind and strings.

The other pieces are more concentrated in manner but exude equal flair. Distanza (2004) threads a chanson by Jacob Arcadelt through a piece whose divisions of players and texture enhance a sense of musical as well as temporal “distance”, while Van Assendelft’s Vermeer (2004) takes a possibly spurious work by the Dutch master as the basis for a clavichord study that Pamela Nash renders with exquisite poise. After Braque (2005) is a pungently scored ensemble piece, its eventful progress interrupted by interludes whose content suggested paintings by that artist. Playing and recording leave nothing to be desired, and Carpenter’s notes are as entertaining as his music. Those unfamiliar with the latter have now no excuse not to make its acquaintance.