Richard Dubugnon writes postmodern music that has a smile on its face and its tongue in its cheek. Born in Lausanne in 1968, his work as a double bass player and his links with a ballet company explain his liking for jazzy rhythms offset by a lyricism that is easy-going rather than sentimental. Taken together, the three recent works on this CD are no more derivative than most examples of new music. It’s what they relate to, and what they do with those relationships, that makes Dubugnon’s compositions so intriguing.

Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, as in the Bach-alluding Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, makes sure that you never think for a moment that this might be genuinely 18th-century music. With postmodernism like Dubugnon’s that prop of certainty is called into doubt, and listeners are encouraged to question whether the Bernstein-like exuberance of Klavieriana’s outer movements earns its resurrection in music written in 2015. Does something not written by Bernstein, but which could have been, have as much right to be heard as the real thing? Postmodernism says ‘of course’, because composition has always been about doing recognisably different things with elements already familiar, and with Dubugnon differences are to do with fresh, unpredictable contexts – associations with other composers as well as Bernstein – and also with a wealth of distinctive formal and textural details. Among these, Klavieriana may well be the only piano concerto since Tippett’s to pair the concert grand with a celesta.

Klavieriana starts Allegro febbroso, but its feverishness is jovial rather than threatening. After a supple, reflective Siciliana and a full-on cadenza, the Allegro finale exchanges febbroso for volatile, and the promise of a big-tune apotheosis is niftily sidestepped in favour of a last taste of the dialogue between piano and celesta that brings textural diversion throughout. Dubugnon’s two compact chamber symphonies, which frame Klavieriana, could actually be called chamber concertos, in that both feature some witty detours into showy solo writing. Written in 2013 and 2017 respectively, they are polished and well proportioned, with just enough post-1900 edginess to keep you entertained and enlightened. Noriko Ogawa, Thomas Zehetmair and his Winterthur team – please excuse the cliché – have a ball, and the BIS recording sits back and lets Dubugnon’s always exotic colour combinations work their irresistible charms. Just the thing to keep the Covid glooms at bay.