What a journey it’s been. Since 1987, Australian classical group Guitar Trek has been at the forefront of commissioning new works for guitar quartet, as well as working with luthiers to develop different-size guitars to form a true guitar family: treble, standard, baritone and bass (steel as well as nylon string guitars are utilised).

This recording, actually made in 2007, has been released to celebrate 25 years of Guitar Trek and features works by some of Australia’s best-known composers for the instrument: Nigel Westlake, Phillip Houghton, Richard Charlton and Martin Wesley-Smith. The Guitar Trek line-up here features Timothy Kain, Minh Le Hoang, Daniel McKay and Harold Gretton (it’s since changed, with Bradley Kunda and Matt Withers replacing McKay and Gretton).

If Westlake’s Six Fish scintillates with shimmering water, pointillistic textures and playful melodies, Houghton’s Nocturne, originally for piano, is a study in meditative if occasionally ruffled calm and moonlit passages.

Charlton’s Capricorn Skies is “an attempt to capture in sound the mood or resonance of a variety of Australian skies and landscapes”. It’s a tour-de-force of sound-painting that finds Guitar Trek at its most dramatically expansive. The following non-linear Wave Radiance by Houghton, who describes it as a “sonic event” with no...