Among the generation of Polish composers who came to prominence at the turn of the 1970s, Zygmunt Krauze (b1938) has amassed an output of the greatest consistency – founded as it is on the concept of Unitary Music, in which the salient elements of a piece are present from its very start then evolve in a process of which that piece is potentially only a fragment. This is demonstrated in Fête galante et pastorale (1975), the eight layers of a music installation here combined as a fluid entity where the presence of folk instruments disrupts the classical sound world of the title, and in Suite de danses et de chansons (1977) with its interplay of Bulgarian rhythms and Baroque dances in a verse-and-response between the harpsichord and orchestra.

The other two pieces pursue a more abstract if hardly less arresting trajectory. The First Piano Concerto (1976) evolves incrementally as the soloist variously emerges and disappears within an orchestra of fastidious hues and timbres, while the Violin Concerto (1980) draws upon an expressive rhetoric that renders the traditional components of the genre (not least the initial orchestral tutti) from a provocative though never abstruse angle. Performances are as fine as expected given the involvement of such artists as Elz˙bieta Chojnacka and Konstanty Kulka, while the sound on these recordings (made between 1980 and 2000) has the textural clarity necessary to appreciate this music’s arresting subtleties. Not easily available on first release, their wider dissemination should help to bring Krauze’s music justifiably greater attention.