A reissue of a 2017 live recording, this set of performances by Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth of György Ligeti’s chamber works is an impressively defined and spirited collection.

They begin with the Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, a partial arrangement of his Musica ricercata for piano. Immediately it’s clear that Les Siècles (and Roth) have a superb collective ear for timbres. Perhaps it’s the group’s experience in period-instrument performance, but here the subtlety of colours is something to behold – not a note goes past without it being carefully weighted and balanced within the ensemble’s performance.

Ligeti said of the Kammerkonzert that it “has four movements corresponding to different types of motion”, and, like his famous Atmosphères, uses the micropolyphony technique to create some truly unearthly textures. It’s not the easiest listen, but as in the Six Bagatelles, Les Siècles and Roth delineate each individual line so that what you hear becomes a dense, unwinding mesh of notes, a little like the aural equivalent of a cat’s cradle.