On ‘Pierrot Dreaming’ (6/02), Victoria Soames Samek gathered together an enticing selection of Thea Musgrave’s chamber music with clarinet, and ‘The Fall of Narcissus’ fills out the picture to date. Of the three works written during the 1960s, Serenade contrasts a Stravinskyan rhythmic dexterity in its outer Vivo movements with a nocturnal introspection in its central Andante. The balance between woodwind and strings is keenly judged, as it is in the two Impromptu pieces. The first is a dialogue, alternately capricious and lyrical, for flute and oboe; the second adds clarinet in a more extended and varied discourse, each of the instruments predominating in one of the central sections while being held in fine accord at the opening and close.

Of the two compositions dating from 1988, Narcissus formulates an abstract drama around the myth of one who is intrigued and then destroyed by his own reflection. The ruminations of the clarinet are enhanced by the subtle and often poetic use of time delay, creating myriad timbral and harmonic reflections around the soloist. The Wind Quintet, in four continuous sections, puts the players through a plotless scenario in which each comes to the fore during an animated and, at times, wistful interplay. As in the sequence of concertos on which her wider reputation still rests, Musgrave’s understanding of instrumental character is revealed here at its most complete.

Rounded off by the pithy Four Portraits from 1956, engagingly sung by Stephen Varcoe, this is another well planned and realised Musgrave collection, superbly recorded at London’s Wathan Hall. In terms of the works featured, Volume 1 should be investigated by those new to the composer, but no one so acquainted will need further prompting to acquire the present disc.