Charles Wuorinen’s Alphabetical Ashbery consists of four poem settings arranged by title in, you guessed it, alphabetical order. Jeffrey Gavett’s baritone voice (with frequent falsetto excursions) interacts with a clarinet doubling on bass clarinet, a trumpet and a trombone in atonal, rhythmically uneventful counterpoint. The atonal vocal writing makes little memorable melodic impression but you understand every word on first hearing. At least loadbang (yes, the lower case is correct) serve up this piece with the utmost precision.

As does Anne-Marie McDermott in Wuorinen’s 2007 Fourth Piano Sonata, which you’d understandably confuse for the 1986 Third Sonata if you happen to listen to both works back to back. The first, second and fourth movements are all about serial rigour, rapid lines darting up and down the keyboard, confident forward momentum and ugly academia. But the slow third movement offers windows of lyrical respite, some lovely, full-bodied chords and a palpable sense of tension and release.

However, Wuorinen justifies his formidable reputation when he channels his awesome technique towards expressive and theatrical ends, as in It Happens Like This, a cantata with four singers and 12 players on texts by the late James Tate. While Tate was one of America’s most imaginative, wryly witty poets, these texts are actually closer to prose/poems and storytelling. Wuorinen handles their wordy wildness and gripping narrative flow by tellingly going back and forth between sung and spoken passages. Moreover, he always hits on just the right instrumental texture or dynamic brush stroke needed to support, enhance and comment upon the text. For example, Wuorinen prefaces ‘The Formal Invitation’ (basically the unfolding of a rather twisted dinner party) with ominous sustained strings punctuated by low brass, marimba and piano flourishes that Bernard Hermann would have coveted for his Hitchcock scores. ‘Intruders’ features busy yet transparent lines that effortlessly float like a Calder mobile around Douglas Williams’s wickedly engaging bass voice. In short, this disc embodies two sides of Charles Wuorinen’s creative persona: the musical misanthrope and the mellifluous master.