Olivier Greif’s is an unfamiliar name to me, and I had to search out the website run by his brother for a biographical outline. Parisian-born of Polish parents, his father a survivor of Auschwitz, Greif was something of a child prodigy both as composer and pianist. He studied with, among others, Marius Constant and Berio, and was influenced by Britten, Mahler and Shostakovich. He wrote more than 100 works, was fascinated by English poetry – particularly Shakespeare, Blake and the Metaphysical poets – and seemed preoccupied with death. His own death was sudden and lonely: he was found, having apparently been dead for several days, still seated at his piano, just a few weeks after his 50th birthday in 2000.

The Requiem (1999) has been championed by John Poole. He directed the first performances as well as this recording, made for BBC Radio 3 and broadcast in February 2002 in the Choir Works series. It is full of subversions, uneasy harmonies and anxious melodic lines but avoids the customary evocations of terror and final judgement, unless you count the inclusion of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and its head-chopping refrain in the Sanctus. The piano pieces create similarly startling collisions of styles and tonalities, dislocations and false endings.

The CD, which also contains a recording of Mildred Clary (to whom one of the piano portraits is dedicated) reading her ‘Letter to Olivier’, is an absorbing introduction to the intriguing and rather eerie sound world of a neglected talent.