This is the first of two recordings in this issue in which a living composer dialogues with Machaut, the first composer to have self-consciously projected a creative persona for his contemporaries (the second being Soupir Editions’ Philippe Leroux disc on page 78). Here it is Heinz Holliger, whose multi-movement Machaut-Transkriptionen alternates works by Machaut with ‘transcriptions’ based on them with a greater or lesser degree of audible freedom.

The cycle begins with three such pairs, Machaut being represented by members of The Hilliard Ensemble and Holliger by three solo violas. The Swiss composer’s contributions become progressively lengthier and the second half of the cycle consists of more substantial pieces, first for all four Hilliards, then for the violas, and finally for both groups together. The cumulative quality of this scheme is formally effective, as is Machaut’s progressive dissolution (in a positive sense) into an idiom that incorporates both him and Holliger.

To my ear, the later transcriptions are the more successful because less literal: sticking to the letter of Machaut’s text imparts a degree of predictability that Holliger’s scrubbed and smudged harmonics don’t quite offset. The Hoquetus David transcription is particularly fine, however, and from there the cycle takes off, achieving some strikingly pathetic accents in the final piece.

As with the Leroux cycle, this is required listening for anyone who is interested in confronting old and new and recognises the affinity between them. The performances give a convincing account of the cycle’s narrative arc, but The Hilliard Ensemble sound unsure of themselves, both in Holliger and (more surprisingly) in Machaut. Whereas both composers present them with pungent asperities that ought to be met head-on (not to say relished), a certain tentativeness puts them at odds with their instrumental counterparts, suggesting a collaboration that hasn’t quite gelled.