WA composer Lachlan Skipworth’s instrument is the clarinet. But he also studied the shakuhachi. It is the dialogue between these two wind instruments, which themselves are impelled like slender spirits by the winds of different histories, different philosophies, that is most emblematic of Skipworth’s music. His works are always highly crafted and precisely argued. Yet always sensitive to ma, the Japanese concept of negative space. And to the play of shadows across the mind.

Skipworth’s first recorded album, generously reviewed by Lisa MacKinney, is like this third one devoted to his chamber music. It includes Skipworth’s Piano Trio, Piano Quartet, Clarinet Quintet and The Night Sky Fall for clarinet, piano and psalterphone. Between these two releases is an album featuring orchestral and choral music, including the astonishing Breath of Thunder.

I don’t like the word “accessible” in relation to classical music, because it implies superficiality. Better to say “directness”. And here we find ourselves confronted by a more direct, diatonically inclined language than that of the works on...