ECM New Series presents the first full album devoted to the composer Dobrinka Tabakova, who was born in Bulgaria in 1980, raised from a young age in London, and is now a British citizen. This remarkable recording of her orchestral and chamber compositions for strings is richly melodic, texturally sensuous, and often emotionally radiant.

The disc features Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello & Strings and the Rameau-channeling Suite in Old Style for viola and chamber orchestra - both performed by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra - as well as three chamber works: the string trio Insight, the string septet Such Different Paths and a trio for violin, accordion and double-bass, Frozen River Flows.

The performers include star violinist Janine Jansen, leading the septet, and several of Tabakova’s former conservatory colleagues from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama: violinist Roman Mints, violist and conductor Maxim Rysanov, and Kristina Blaumane, principal cellist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Tabakova’s music has a particularly 21st-century feel for its broad palette - its free mix of tonality and modality, of folk-music influence and the example of past masters. In it there resides the new and the familiar, or rather the familiar within the new, and vice versa; there are the spirits of East and West coursing through the pieces, usually hand in hand; and just as the composer’s technical virtuosity is apparent, she displays a gift for direct communication that can be heard in virtually every measure.