Mark Knoop (as soloist in the Choralvorspiele) and soprano Juliet Fraser team up in two recent cycles by Michael Finnissy, composed in 2012 and 2016 respectively. Given the extent of the composer’s solo piano output, the Choralvorspiele are perhaps easier to situate (within the discography, at any rate). From typically limpid beginnings the counterpoint gradually ramifies; there is often a single point of culmination in each movement, though variously situated (as the composer hints in the programme notes, some of the movements sound more like postludes than preludes). The piano-writing ranges from manic to stark: from the note-spinning of the fifth movement, reminiscent of the ‘High’ Baroque at its most obsessive, to, at the other extreme, the conclusion of the penultimate movement which consists of a single note, its repetitions coloured (unless I’m mistaken) by stopped notes and pedalling. One has come to take virtuosity as a given, but Knoop’s handling of this passage, where there’s nowhere to hide, is one of the most impressive things on this disc. (Needless to say, without the reams and skeins of what precedes it, such a passage would be far less affecting.)

The Andersen-Liederkreis is a tougher proposition. Alternating Danish, English, and German, the texts are sometimes sung, sometimes spoken. (Just as Finnissy avoids setting chorales in the Choralvorspiele, so here he steers clear of the writer’s famous tales in favour of his little-known poetry; this sideways look at his source material is typical.) What I cannot quite grasp is the intended relationship between text and ‘accompaniment’ (the term is unavoidably problematised). The answer varies from setting to setting but in some cases (such as ‘The Soldier’) the distancing effect, or rather its motivation, seems intractable. This might explain Fraser’s strangely unresolved characterisations, as though the lyricism of Finnissy’s models and his own ambivalent, mercurial stance were difficult to reconcile.