Now 91, the Hungarian composer György Kurtág belongs to the generation of Stockhausen, Ligeti and Boulez, yet has always walked his own highly distinctive path. Never one to use two words where one – or even a fragment of a word – will do, his music has been painstakingly picked out over the years, the briefest work sometimes taking half a decade to create and the same again to perfect and polish. These three CDs represent the composer’s complete output for chamber ensemble and voices – sometimes choir, more frequently solo soprano – from 1970 to 2011. Kurtág’s art is revealed here at its most penetrating and condensed.

The jewel of disc one is Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova, a song cycle of 21-tiny Russian poems by Rimma Dalos, its disjointed protagonist (an agonisingly convincing Natalia Zagorinskaya) reminiscent of late Beckett. Scored for miniscule chamber groups, but flecked with colourful percussion and a prominent part for cimbalom, it draws the listener in deep and cries out to be staged.

The second CD includes two involving purely orchestral works, the hypnotic, Beethoven-inspired …quasi una fantasia… (written for the late Zoltán Kocsis and including roles for marimba, harp, celesta, cimbalom, recorders and a quintet of harmonicas!) and the microtonally challenging Double Concerto for piano and cello (Tamara Stefanovich and Jean-Guihen Queyras both thrillingly secure). Veteran conductor and Kurtág guru Reinbert de Leeuw is spectacularly authoritative throughout, his finely-tuned Asko|Schönberg ensemble pitch-perfect.

Other standouts include What is the Word? (real Beckett this time for mezzo, ensemble and choir) and the bleak, accordion-driven Songs of Sorrow and Despair for double choir. The ECM engineering is state of the art, the array of sounds most naturally caught, even if some of Kurtág’s meticulously specified spacial layouts are hard to pull off on record. Remarkably, the nonagenarian composer has just completed his first opera. Onwards and upwards.