You know where you are with Mark-Anthony Turnage. Not for this composer those abstract head-scratchers with titles such as Acrostic V. Instead he composes Blood on the Floor, or, on this splendid CD from the London Philharmonic Orchestra's label, Twice Through the Heart: a “dramatic scena” inspired by the story of an abused wife imprisoned for stabbing her husband after she refused to testify against him. Before the piece is a few bars old, Sarah Connolly - most urgent of British mezzo-sopranos - has hurtled out the word “garrotte”. Around the corner is “rolling pin” and “steak knife”. In this 1997 piece, Jackie Kay's text doesn't mince words, just as Turnage doesn't mince notes. Who said contemporary music was beyond direct communication?

All three pieces on the disc are first recordings. Only Hidden Love Song, a lightly reflective billet-doux of 2006 to Turnage's fiancée (now his wife), is captured in concert, complete with applause. But thanks to Marin Alsop, the LPO, and Turnage's convulsive art, the crackle of live excitement is just as strong in the studio performances of Twice Through the Heart and the war song cycle The Torn Fields, a powerfully eloquent assemblage of First World War poems, written in the wake of Turnage's opera The Silver Tassie.

After three years working with Turnage, their composer in residence, the LPO speak his language brilliantly: listen especially in The Torn Fields to the molten sound of the winds and brass. And Alsop's commitment is total, whether she's conjuring the composer's urban whoops, battlefield desolation or percussive tinkling in Hidden Love Song, suggesting the sounds of a clock.

Track by track, you can easily tell why singers and instrumentalists alike relish Turnage's music. Nothing is dead or dusty. And the composer knows his artists' gifts. The awful clarity of Twice Through the Heart is ideal for Connolly's dramatic flair. The Torn Fields, pockmarked with pain and bitterness, triumphantly showcases Gerald Finley's chameleonic way with emotions. And Martin Robertson's soprano saxophone has its day in Hidden Love Song, relaxed and tenderly expressive.

These works so vividly performed are among the best in Turnage's recent output. Listen with relish.

(LPO Live)

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