Kenneth Hesketh (b1968) is one of Britain’s finest composers and (at the Royal College of Music) teachers. His 50th birthday was not exactly celebrated to the rafters but this beautifully played and produced collection of three of his most recent orchestral works from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales goes some way in making amends. Together, they give a very cogent view of Hesketh’s stature as a composer, his current expressive concerns and the sheer vivacity of his orchestral writing.

The works are presented in chronological sequence, opening with Knotted Tongues (2012, rev 2014), originally written for Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year, the Seattle Symphony. A tight-knit, fast-moving fantasia, its title derives from Benson Bobrick’s book on the history of stammering, and sufferers’ fear of ‘the anticipation of the glottal catastrophe’. The music’s vigorous, hard-hitting momentum also relates to the composer’s longstanding fascination with the notion of the ‘unreliable machine’ and the implications of malfunction – a mechanical stammer, perhaps.

Not that Hesketh’s music stammers or breaks down, however. The innate fluency that all his scores feature is showcased particularly strongly in the five-movement chamber-orchestral suite Of Time and Disillusionment (2016). For those unfamiliar with Hesketh’s music, this unusually compelling musical fabric may be the place to start, at its heart an enchanting evocation of a petite sonnerie. The concern with time and its passing recurs in In ictu oculi (‘In the blink of an eye’; 2017), a set of three meditations (separated by two brief interludes, entitled ‘Stele’). Originally composed for wind band, this full-orchestral expansion – made for this recording – is one of the composer’s most vivid creations. With terrific sound and performances (expertly directed by Christoph-Mathias Mueller), this is very strongly recommended.