Hans Abrahamsen writes music that is clear and careful – he says he spends most of his time stripping things away – but in his early years he could be quite the polemicist. His First String Quartet came out shouting, fist in the air, a manifesto of 10 short preludes that rage in reverse from full-on atonalism to full-on baroque pastiche. In one way or another, he has always had a dialogue with music of the past, whether his own or other people’s, and this disc includes his lush and uncanny transcriptions of works by Nielsen (Fantasy Pieces) and Satie (Gymnopédies). Ensemble MidtVest has the diligence to keep them hushed, the urgency to propel his sombre Six Pieces for Violin, Horn and Piano. However, in the string quartet that diligence starts to sound drab – I missed the bright focus of last year’s recording from the Danish String Quartet.