Composers are often painfully aware of how much longer it can take to write down musical thoughts than it does to invent or perform them. With the three works on these discs, Giacinto Scelsi didn’t simply improvise and record extended passages and transcribe them himself, but left an assistant with the challenging task of putting pen to paper. Both discs have extended booklet essays explaining how Scelsi’s improvisations became compositions to be played by other people, and how this process relates to non-Western religious and philosophical beliefs. Suite No 8 (1952) is called Bot Ba, suggesting Tibetan religious rituals; No 9 (1953) is Ttai, which identifies a symbol in the Chinese Book of Changes representing peace; and No 10 (1954) is Ka, a Sanskrit word for ‘who?’ or ‘what?’, implying that the music embodies a quest for something – or someone – essential.

The sheer strangeness of all this has made Scelsi a name to conjure with among many avant-garde composers in the years since 1945. His music is very hit-and-miss but at its best – a category represented here by Suite No 8 – it transcends strangeness in a kind of visionary wildness that balances urgency against depth with remarkable success. Steffen Schleiermacher’s account of this 30-minute epic is compelling in its controlled intensity. Suite No 10, which has some of No 8’s power while being more loosely organised in places, is no less convincingly put across (especially its Nancarrow-like finale) by Sabine Liebner. The Wergo recording is less refined acoustically than MDG’s for Schleiermacher, but some listeners could well prefer Liebner’s more detached approach in music that has so many deceptive associations with the piano repertory from Liszt and Ravel to Bartók and beyond.

Both discs include the 35-minute Suite No 9, and it is here that my own problems with Scelsi’s music arise. Both annotators quote the composer’s injunction that ‘this suite should be listened to and played with the greatest inner calm. Nervous people stay away!’ But I’m tempted to suggest that music seeking to capture the essence of peace and ‘inner calm’ cannot be dreamily improvised: it needs concentrated, self-critical thought. There are a few brief moments in these nine movements to remind you of the less peaceful, more persuasive Scelsi of Suites Nos 8 and 10. But, even with the dedicated advocacy of Liebner and Schleiermacher, I cannot feel that regular listening to this work is something I will be making time for.