This is a most interesting collection of three of Sofia Gubaidulina’s less-heard orchestral works. Pro et contra, from 1989, is reasonably well known, but neither Concordanza nor Fairytale Poem (Märchenbild), both from 1971, features particularly often on programmes of the composer’s music.

Pro et contra is built on material loosely derived from a Russian Orthodox chant (specifically, an Alleluia). As Dorothea Redepenning points out in her notes, the work’s title ‘is to be understood dramatically: it stands for forces working “for and against” the chant’. There are thus two sound worlds in conflict here: the first, suggesting joyful peals of bells, is constantly threatened by the second, darker, chromatic, often brutal, but it is the affirmative quality of the chant-based theme that wins through, especially in the third movement, to be confirmed completely in Gubaidulina’s oratorio Alleluia from 1990, the two works thus forming a diptych. Such dramatic contrasts require extremely sensitive playing, and the Hanover players miss no nuance of this highly demanding score.

Concordanza, for chamber orchestra, also works on the premise of two conflicting ideas, essentially agreement and disagreement. They fight until a balance is struck, but although light banishing darkness is, one might say, a recurrent theme with Gubaidulina, this struggle is anything but simplistic. There are innumerable interpenetrations of musical material and a rich array of changes in instrumental colour that make following the ‘argument’ a fascinating and fulfilling exercise. Fairytale Poem makes use of very similar musical language but tells a story (the life of a dreaming piece of chalk, obviously a metaphor for human existence and creativity) that really does end in a blaze of light.

Performances throughout are of the highest calibre, and the recording is as clear as a bell.