Friedrich Cerha celebrated his 92nd birthday earlier this year and two of these works are from his eighties. The largest piece, however, was completed at the comparative youthful age of 69: Eight Movements based on Hölderlin Fragments for string sextet (1995). These are not so much unsung settings of selected verses (printed in the booklet) as instrumental fantasias derived from both the texts’ emotional impact and what Cerha calls ‘the melody of the text’. Rooted stylistically in the music of Berg and early Webern, Cerha’s own personal idiom binds them together as a cohesive entity.

The Oboe Quintet (2007) was a deliberate attempt to write a modern work eschewing ‘the “new” instrumental techniques … sounds that are “foreign” to the instrument’. The music itself is in no sense regressive and in places – especially the slow central span – quite exploratory. It is as if Cerha did not want to mask his expressive purpose with instrumental distraction. How much of a vicarious task that may have been for the oboist Heinz Holliger is anyone’s guess!

After a sextet and quintet, the most recent (and last-placed) work is a string trio in the form of nine quirky Bagatelles (2008), ‘miniatures with very precise contours’, as the composer writes in the booklet. Each has a very specific character, from the opening ‘Zornig’ (angry), through melancholy – visited twice! – and capriciousness, to the concluding ‘Trotzig, Eigensinnig’ (defiant, stubborn). While not a set of variations per se, there are thematic connections between the movements. The 10 members of the peripatetic Swiss Chamber Players (only the viola player Jürg Dähler and the cellist Daniel Haefliger play in all three works) perform splendidly throughout, with pinpoint accuracy of ensemble and intonation. Terrific sound, too, from Claves. Recommended.