The English composer Hugh Shrapnel will be eighty next year. This CD of chamber works (woodwind and piano) were all written between 2005 and 2022 and recorded in 2024.

Beautifully and idiomatically written and performed, this showcases some of Shrapnel’s most adroit and memorable music.

It is also surprisingly melodic, given that he studied with Cardew and, together with other contemporaries such as John White, Chris Hobbs and Howard Skempton, was a leading member of the experimental Scratch Orchestra.

Those rather heady and idealistic days now seem very remote, musically speaking. Shrapnel’s always vivid writing seems to have a Francophilean tinge, both recalling Poulenc and, nearer to home, the melodic and harmonic suavity of Sir Lennox Berkeley.

There is so much to enjoy here, from the etherealness of Belladonna for flute and piano, to the chirpy rondos that conclude both the Sonatina for horn and piano, as well as the Clarinet Sonata.

Objets Fixes is scored for the unusual combination of oboes, clarinet, horn and tenor trombone, whilst Hilly Fields for wind quintet consists of six movements that affectionately depict areas in south-east London close to where the composer lives.

Adjectives such as charming and delightful must be fairly rarely employed vis a vis music written in this century, but they are certainly appropriate in descriptions of this music by Hugh Shrapnel.

Richard Leigh Harris