A restlessly undulating violin and piano figure opens Nico Muhly’s Doublespeak, written for Eighth Blackbird in celebration of Philip Glass’s 75th birthday. The 2012 work is the oldest on the programme the award-winning new music ensemble is touring across Australia for Musica Viva, but its influences hark back even further to the Minimalism of the 1970s.

The slap of bow on strings underpins Muhly’s music driven forward by Yvonne Lam on violin, interspersed with more relaxed passages in which ethereal piccolo lines (Nathalie Joachim) give the music a hazier texture. Muhly borrows an excerpt from Glass’s Music in Twelve Parts, which gradually comes to the fore, replacing turbulent flute and vibraphone lines with a dream-like – almost Spectral – tranquillity.

Bryce Dessner’s Murder Ballades swings into action with a jaunty piano and clarinet duet. Dessner – better known as the guitarist with US band The National – wrote this work for Eighth Blackbird in 2013, drawing on and reimagining the American folk tradition of ‘murder ballads’. Since Eighth Blackbird recorded Murder Ballades on their 2015 album Filament, Dessner has expanded the work with several extra movements.

The serene melody of Young Emily is interspersed with quick, slinky slides echoed in the brighter,...