As Colin Matthews notes in the booklet preface, recordings of contemporary music tend to enjoy only a short catalogue life. So it’s good to see NMC restoring three of Thea Musgrave’s orchestral works (released on the now-defunct Collins Classics label) to circulation, and with a first recording of her uncompromising Beethoven bicentennial commemoration.

Indeed, Memento Vitae (1970) is a ‘concerto in homage’ of distinctly uncelebratory nature. The tense initial atmosphere sets up a tonal conflict taken over from the finale of the Eighth Symphony, in a fractured and ambivalent context. Further allusions build to a conflation of the ‘Storm’ from the Pastoral Symphony with the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ martial music from the Missa Solemnis, before the chorale from the A minor quartet fails to secure tonal and emotional closure. If the work lacks the thematic self-consistency of Musgrave’s other concertos, it embodies their ‘dramatic-abstract’ concept as a whole.

A more subtle exploration of instrumental drama is evident in Night Music (1969), its two horns variously placed within and at the front of the orchestra; complementing the music’s fluid contrasts in mood and pace, and with one horn sounding offstage in the evocative closing minutes. In the oboe concerto Helios (1994), the journey of the mythical Greek sun-god is reflected in the seating of the orchestra – with oboe at the helm, and seven wind players representing the horses ferried each day from across the globe. A storm sequence threatens to obliterate both the soloist and concertante group, but a peaceful resolution sees the work come musically and conceptually full-circle. The Seasons (1988) is a ‘concerto for chamber orchestra’, in which artists as varied as Van Gogh and Jasper Johns inspire a cumulative traversal from the restlessness of ‘Autumn’, through the emotional distance of ‘Winter’ and the gathering activity of ‘Spring’, to the liberation of feelings – and nations! – in ‘Summer’. Musical characterisation seems more diffuse here, but Musgrave’s feeling for instrumental sonority remains as acute as ever.

Excellent performances from all concerned, not least Nicholas Daniel in the demanding solo part of Helios, and a commendably natural recording with no jarring difference between the London and Glasgow acoustics. Informative notes from the composer, and a strongly recommendable disc which augurs well for NMC’s Ancora label.