The thing about sounds and noises is that they are colourless, so the pieces are like black and white photos or drawings until a note or scale passage appears on the pallid sonic plane like a dot or splash of colour, with startling effect. The notes that flow from Widman’s clarinet, in the first piece, entitled “Fever Fantasy” are often the recognizable element, sometimes quoting Robert Schumann’s First Violin Sonata, before he reduces them to colourless noises. And in my favourite, “Night Piece” for clarinet, cello and piano, the mood turns blue, as if Gershwin’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” were being performed by Martians.

Widman’s compositions, his melodic forms and specific performance indications trigger moods that slip through the bars of conventional musical associations, and for this reason alone create an atmosphere of liberation and curiosity. His third string quartet (2003), entitled Hunt Quartet, opens with the members of Accordes shaking their bows at each other and uttering a terrifying shriek: then the music whisks you away to the sounds of a appropriately discordant highland fling, over hill and dale in pursuit of the prey.