Best known as arranger and multi-instrumentalist in the rock band Arcade Fire, Richard Reed Parry has also been building a classical catalogue of significance. The present disc comprises a cycle of pieces entitled ‘Music for Heart and Breath’ – its underlying premise being that the playing of the musicians is geared to their individual and collective pulse-rates; their inhaling and exhaling setting the music’s tempo on both a localised and long-term basis. If this seems perilously close to a gimmick (Heinz Holliger attempted something not so dissimilar in his Cardiophonie of four decades earlier), the outcome is logical and satisfying.

After the capricious dialogue of Quartet for Heart and Breath (initially heard here in its sextet format), the greater variety of Heart and Breath Sextet readily draws the listener in through its timbral and textural allure, and then For Heart, Breath and Orchestra extends this process on to a larger tonal and expressive canvas. Most arresting, though, is Interruptions (Heart and Breath Nonet) – seven brief yet diverse pieces that effortlessly bridge any perceived ‘divide’ between Parry’s experimental and classical tendencies. Duet for Heart and Breath ostensibly rounds off the sequence with its touching interplay between viola and piano, though here the original Kronos version of Quartet… is included to bring the cycle deftly and appealingly full-circle.

These performances – featuring such exponents of post-minimalism as guitarist Bryce Dessner and the currently ubiquitous Nico Muhly – are formidably attuned to Parry’s requirements. Those who already possess Edwin Outwater’s account of the orchestral work will have heard it in a more bracingly projected realisation, though the present reading is of a piece with the inward focus of the music-making evident here. Clearly and spaciously recorded, it offers a listening experience that is riveting or dismaying but assuredly never dull.