Jonathan Harvey’s Sringāra Chaconne is a late work whose exuberant balancing of sensuous and spiritual, Eastern and Western, sums up all that is most invigorating and accessible in his music. Written in 2008, when the opera Wagner Dream was still fresh in his mind, it effortlessly avoids modernistic clichés. It is also powerfully dramatic, moving with the kind of cumulative coherence found in memorable examples of the chaconne from Bach to Britten to reach its goal of a joyously uncluttered melodic line.

The title of Notes on Light, a concerto for cello and ensemble by Kaija Saariaho, suggests an emphasis on brightness and exuberance comparable to Harvey’s. Yet it is not only twice the length but also a good deal weightier. Saariaho has no difficulty in sustaining such a large-scale design but the work risks seeming over-insistent in its vibrant assertion of emotional urgency; perhaps the performers could have offered more light as well as shade, and the recording have provided wider perspectives? Nevertheless, Notes on Light is an imposing example of contemporary music’s capacity to allude to the Romantic tradition without falling into postmodern pastiche.

The disc takes its title – ‘Scherben’ (‘shards’ or ‘fragments’) – from Enno Poppe’s 12-minute firework display, brilliantly dispatched by Musikfabrik but sounding almost flippantly spontaneous and improvisatory alongside its much more intense and strongly rooted companion pieces. Finally, with dense polyphonic clouds circulating restlessly and searchingly, Emmanuel Nunes’s Chessed I seems to be questioning rather than affirming the mystical associations of the Hebrew term that provides its title. This is the only one of the four pieces in which complexity inhibits communication, at least in early listenings; with a recording that places you inside the action, Chessed completes this rewarding disc with an uncompromising challenge.