By Jonathan Blumhofer

A new release from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Timothy Redmond showcases music from four very different composers, two British and two American. A survey of Italian concertos from pianist Roberto Prosseda, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductor Nir Kabaretti supplies a specter of menace.

Be aware: the stigma often hovering over contemporary music—particularly that it’s impenetrable and atonal—doesn’t apply here. (That it doesn’t apply to a lot of new music these days is a bigger discussion for another day.) Nevertheless, Beyond, a new release from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Timothy Redmond, makes the point by showcasing music from four very different composers, two British and two American.

The younger of the latter pair, Matthew Aucoin, is represented by his Eurydice Suite and Heath. In the former, which involves music drawn from his opera of the same name, the spirit of Prokofiev seems to lurk just beyond the horizon. This is hardly a flaw, though: Aucoin’s handling of the orchestra shares a similar brilliance with the Russian master, and it pays dividends in big moments (the darkly vivid “The Underworld”) as well as tender ones (liquid clarinet solos in “A Letter From Above”).

That deftness carries into Heath, a reflection on Shakespeare’s King Lear, and—along with Aucoin’s contrapuntal awareness—largely redeems the score’s structural choppiness and lack of a satisfying ending (a problem that also dogs the Suite).

The “Liar Suite” from Nico Muhly’s Marnie also exhibits an adept ear for inventive instrumental combinations and devices (e.g., “chattering tremolos”) and a too-sudden conclusion. Moving between turbulent and lyrical sections, the orchestration is probably too busy for its own good, though the slow middle section over a pulsing accompaniment proves affecting.

Thomas Adès’s “Three-Piece Suite” from Powder Her Face, on the other hand, has no shortcomings. This is tipsy, salacious, boldly characterful music that seems to get better and more vital with each hearing.

Similarly appealing, though rather more conventional in terms of sonority, is Jonathan Dove’s trombone concerto Stargazer. As played by Peter Moore, the music, with its kaleidoscopic plays of color and hints of jazz (“Orion, Pegasus”) charms the ear as much for its melodic writing as for its lively dialogues between soloist and orchestra.

In all of this repertoire, the BBCSSO acquits itself with panache. There is nothing tentative, out-of-balance, or questionable about any of these performances. Redmond and his forces have everything well in hand, both in terms of the notes and the spirit behind them. Given how much is going on in every one of these selections, that’s saying something.

Nothing on War Silence, a survey of Italian concertos from pianist Roberto Prosseda, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductor Nir Kabaretti, sounds quite like what the name suggests—even though the album’s final installment is a piece that shares the title. But the specter of menace, if not violence, looms over several of these offerings, which span the early 20^th century up to the present day.

The most recent installment, Cristian Carrara’s title track, offers a meditation on the years’-long conflict in Ukraine. Though its overarching mood is more reflective and hopeful than anticipated, the Pordenone native has crafted an engaging three-movement score, though one that might benefit from a bit more harmonic grit.

Be that as it may, Prosseda leans into the central section’s (“Solitude”) lyricism with a singer’s intuition, and his execution of the score’s more dramatic and urgent spots—like the finale’s opening toccata-like episodes—is nicely grounded.

In Silvio Omizzolo’s Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra, pianist and orchestra make cogent work of the music’s spiky, acerbic turns of phrase. This is the album’s most traditional number, with the piano and orchestra facing off in their usual antagonistic roles across its twenty-minute span. Here, too, no programs or extramusical impulses are anywhere in sight—though the work’s nervous energy and searching slow movement give it a decidedly modern sensibility.

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Piccolo Concerto doesn’t boast a program, either, though it originated in 1941 as a showpiece for the seven-year-old virtuoso Muriel Couvreaux. Not exactly a child’s piece—the composer didn’t stint on technical demands or soften his essentially chromatic (later, serialized) musical language—the concerto is, still, often bright and jaunty. Prosseda, Kabaretti, and the Philharmonic seem to take special pleasure in letting its moments of joy and naivete (like the “Girotondo” and “Ripresa” movements) shine.

The disc’s outlier is Guido Alberto Fano’s Andante e Allegro con fuoco, whose Straussian warmth and essential songfulness call to mind some of the composer’s contemporaries, especially Busoni. Though it doesn’t quite fit, stylistically, with the rest of the program, this is beautiful music—and, in the present context, a haunting reminder that, when it was written in 1900, nobody knew what horrors the new century held.

Jonathan Blumhofer is a composer and violist who has been active in the greater Boston area since 2004. His music has received numerous awards and been performed by various ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Camerata Chicago, Xanthos Ensemble, and Juventas New Music Group. Since receiving his doctorate from Boston University in 2010, Jon has taught at Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and online for the University of Phoenix, in addition to writing music criticism for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.