Repression and censorship; optimism and freedom; renewed constraints. If this sounds like a now all too familiar story of political progress achieved and then reversed, then this stunning survey of chamber works by two of Poland’s leading post-war composers suggests that music was there to bear witness to each twist and turn of the tale.

From the post-Stalin thaw of the 1950s and 1960s to the triumphant re-establishment of democracy near century’s end, these vital utterances range from the exploded intensities of Penderecki’s Three Miniatures to the lean, focused expressive charge of Lutosławski’s Partita and the millennial anxieties of Penderecki’s Violin Sonata no.2.

On their first recording with Delphian Records, Michael Foyle and Maksim Štšura transmit every nuance, while giving these works new life as a statement of intent for virtues so unwavering as to seem like a reproach to the inconstancies of political life – alert collaboration, reciprocity, freedom, precision, joy.