Pinnacle Ridge

Each musician in this trio is supremely talented and plays with the sensitivity and virtuosity one would expect from highly trained instrumentalists. Harriet Mackenzie (violin), Meg Hamilton (viola) and Miloš Milivojević (accordion) really listen to each other, creating textures of shimmering beaut in ‘Sakura’ and ecstatic complexity in ‘Virtuozna Harmonika’. Their passion is not to be doubted after hearing the wistful ‘Još ne Sviće Rujna Zora’.

However, their claim to playing ‘music from across the globe’ is tenuous. Much of this repertoire is the work of Western composers creating (usually exoticised) pastiches of traditional musical forms for genteel audiences, and is not really representative of the cultures from which original inspiration has been appropriated. Half of the tracklisting is a roll-call of clichés and includes youth orchestras' favourites such as Brahms' ‘Hungarian Dance No 5’ and ‘Theme from Schindler's List’. I just don't care about yet another rendition of Monti's ‘Czárdás’. Let us hope that, with their next offering, Kosmos use their prodigious skills to show us that the classical music world is not so aloof and out of touch.