The downside of today’s permissive atmosphere, in which composers are free to sound off in almost any idiom and with astonishingly varied degrees of technical finesse, is that we are in danger of undervaluing those whose work upholds a consistent set of aesthetic and technical values. Hugh Wood writes music in an avowedly post-Schoenbergian vein though its earnest combination of intellectual rigour and lyrical revelation reflects the inspiration of Brahms and his forebears.

Wood has held to the basic methodology and style he discovered with his Op 1, the student Variations for viola and piano, publicly unveiled in 1960 but recorded here for the first time. So too is the Piano Trio, an exuberant, sometimes thorny statement from the mid-1980s which concludes this programme. The Overture Op 48 (how many composers were still using opus numbers in 2005?) is a concert opener both pithy and humorous. The most direct, sheerly beautiful offering, and the one with the biggest diatonic component, is the Poem for violin and piano written in 1993 and previously set down by Alexandra Wood and Huw Watkins in their multi-composer “Chimera” miscellany (Usk Recordings). With the piano relegated to an accompanying role, the violin embraces both Stravinsky’s white-note declamation and the 12-note melodic writing of his antipode, ultimately soaring impressionistically, a Lark Ascending. The sense of tranquillity is earned. While there is a previous recording of the Clarinet Trio (1997) by its original performers (Trio Gemelli – Divine Art, 5/03), the characterful exponents here, Roger Heaton, Gabriella Swallow and Charles Wiffen, sound undaunted.

Toccata’s booklet is packed with information: a modest introduction from Wood himself followed by helpful annotations in which Malcolm MacDonald discusses the featured scores in chronological order rather than the sequence in which they appear on disc. The design is dominated by a rather unbecoming shade of brown. This is a collection which, for all its merits, might yet prove indigestible if swallowed whole.