Modern music so often means anxiety, complication and harsh sounds. So it’s refreshing to encounter the optimism and innocent joy of Lou Harrison, one of those great musical explorers and innovators that America produced in the 20th century.

As the three pieces on this CD show, Harrison ranged far and wide. There are re-creations of medieval dances, strenuous fugues, slow movements with that wide-open prairie feel of Aaron Copland, and a sinuous, plaintive melodicism born out of Harrison’s long study of Asian music. In the two Suites written in 1948 and 1960 there are moments of dark complication, but in later years he achieved a marvellous serenity, exemplified here by the Concerto for Pipa (a kind of Chinese mandolin). In this piece you find evocations of the Russian balalaika, Neapolitan folk-song and even a medieval dance. It sounds like the worst kind of cross-cultural mélange, but it’s done with such simplicity that, miraculously, it comes off. The soloist is Wu Man, who is to the pipa what Ravi Shankar was to the sitar, and her performance has a winning delicacy and tact. And the strings of the New Professionals live up to their name, playing with scrupulous precision in the slow movements and incisive energy in the fast ones.

IVAN HEWETT

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