The music of the Russian composer Marina Khorkova mines the idiom associated with Helmut Lachenmann and developed by Mark Andre and other German-based composers. Characterised by the use of extended instrumental techniques and a general avoidance of pitched notes, it is an idiom Lachenmann calls ‘musique concrète instrumentale’; hence, when listening to recordings, we are often in the dark as to the instrumental sources of the unusual sounds heard.

Khorkova’s debut album displays the hallmarks of this style. The opener, Collision, features (according to the booklet-notes) chains rattling, an egg whisk on an electric guitar and ping-pong balls bobbling, while klangNarbe presents a baritone saxophone player growling, a potato peeler being plucked and a Russian doll used as a chime. None of it ever feels gratuitous, though: detailed preliminary acoustical research and well-conceived forms mean that Khorkova’s inventive sonorities are channelled into creating compelling, dramatic works.

The String Quartet shows Khorkova’s knack for integrating diverse sound types into a cohesive whole rather than simply sitting them side by side in collage fashion: the four instruments, tuned in microtonal scordatura, transition at times almost imperceptibly between beautiful, quiet plateaux of stacked harmonics and vexed, screeching rhythmical pulsations. Some works have intensely visual moments: a section of Collision in which high electronic frequencies accompany string harmonics is almost like a lighthouse periodically throwing a spotlight on to a darkened sea. Other works are out-and-out dark, in the manner of De natura sonoris-era Penderecki: VORderGRENZE opens with clarinettist Lanet Flores screaming through her instrument, while Beschwörung durch Lachen’s combination of different tuning systems and unorthodox sound sources (wailing soprano, prepared piano, microtonal cembalo) paints a grotesque worthy of Gogol.

Though it won’t be for everyone, this album suggests a definite talent in the offing. Excellent performances, too, of some taxing scores.