Listeners unfamiliar with this composer have more than likely heard his playing, Colin Twigg (b1960) having been a violinist in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for 25 years and leader of the Bridge Quartet this past decade. The first disc devoted to his music features five chamber works written over a 13-year span, the earliest being a String Trio (1996) whose modest length and undemonstrative idiom (that of the classical chamber tradition from Haydn to Bartók) do not belie Twigg’s mastery of this exacting medium or his questing approach to formal continuity across and between movements. Such qualities are accentuated in the First String Quartet (1997): the most substantial piece here, its subtitle denotes less the influence of Janáček than of Moravian folk music throughout its eventful and often invigorating course.

Less arresting in expression yet more insinuating in its motivic evolution, the Piano Quartet (2000) most fully conforms to the chamber ideal as an interplay of equals – its genesis as a piece for viola and strings is detectable in a subtle emphasis on that instrument. Here and in the Piano Trio (2004) there is a feeling of the piano deployed more as textural filler than for the interest of its ideas, for all that Hiroaki Takenouchi’s pianism is a model of poise. Phantasy Variations on a Theme of Haydn (2009) is a resourceful take on this quintessentially English form, putting its indelible theme through a logical and satisfying process of developing variation. Performances, recording and Twigg’s booklet notes are all exemplary, making for a worthwhile addition to Toccata Classics’ enterprising catalogue.