What does it mean to, as the Ensemble Offspring website reads, ‘champion living composers’ today?Footnote ¹ Not so long ago, simply playing living composers’ work was enough – a peculiar and modern amuse-bouche before the main interpretive entrée. A few commissions here and there, one and done. That this is unsatisfying and unsustainable for new music is hardly news, and this review won't attempt a comprehensive reflection. Instead, I implore you to listen (and watch!) Ensemble Offspring's newly released and excellent album, Offspring Bites 3: En Masse, as a model for how a chamber ensemble can skilfully cultivate and present new compositions by living composers.

Based in Sydney, Ensemble Offspring have been in the business for over 25 years, and one possible explanation why they are so successful is their willingness to adapt to and seemingly embrace/thrive under contemporary conditions and expectations. Offspring Bites 3: En Masse features the recordings of three pieces by contemporary composers (all Australian in this case), as one expects on an album from a contemporary chamber ensemble, but it is accompanied by video commissions for Holly Harrison's bend/boogie/break and Thomas Meadowcraft's Medieval Rococo, as well as a beautifully shot live performance of Alex Pozniak's En Masse. The visual performances add additional depth and texture to the listener experience. The vivid, kaleidoscopic changes in the animation made by Sydney artists Juan Withington and Andrew Morgan for bend/boogie/break and the flickering narrative in the video by Melbourne artist Cobie Orgers for Medieval Rococo extend the listener's attention. In an art that encourages the viewer to work hard in order to experience its pleasures, any assistance towards focus is welcome. Engaging varied and multigenerational audiences is unprecedentedly difficult, but Ensemble Offspring rise to the occasion.

The eponymous piece and first track, En Masse, is an impressive example of the kind of trust between composer and performer that each has to sustain for a compelling performance. Running a full 30 minutes, tri-parted into movements that alternate fast and slow tempi, En Masse is not immediately easy to digest. This is where good performance makes a huge difference. Conductor Roland Peelman charms out lucent moments from a piece full of musical references. A harmony ever so slightly sustained or a brief melodic gesture teases the listener's memory – have I heard that before? Where is that from? Even if the reference never existed in the composer's auto-archaeology, the suggestion is smart and sustains one's interest throughout. Composer Alex Pozniak layers in spotlights on individual instruments – romantic, post-tonal stylings for violinist Véronique Serret, cellist Blair Harris, clarinettist Jason Noble and flautist Lamorna Nightingale – on a bedrock of low piano notes played by Benjamin Kopp, and drumkit played by Ensemble Offspring's artistic director, Claire Edwardes. A noodling, singing voice emerging from the mass of sound plays on the ineluctable human desire to be seen and heard amid the bricolage.

The next piece on the album is Holly Harrison's bend/boogie/break, a continuation of the album's embrace of pitch, as well as a nod to rock, metal and funk. Bass clarinet grounds the composition in boogie, as the strings bend (Rowena McNeish on cello this track), while over and under the piano (played by Zubin Kanga) and flute twist with lively riffs, and percussion hurries everything along like quick banter. The music never breaks in a negative sense, but rather succeeds in challenging rhythmical expectation, propelling the listener forward.

The last, and in my opinion most stunning, piece is Thomas Meadowcraft's Medieval Rococo for alto flute, clarinet, percussion and keyboard. Two chords alternate among the four instruments for almost the entirety of the 13-minute-long piece. With each five-beat sustain, the orchestration changes subtly. Notes stay the same overall but switch between instruments, shuffling from one permutation to the next. Wind players Nightingale and Noble shine here, holding beautiful, pure notes. The kitschiness of the vibraphone motor and the harpsichord patch on the keyboard create an ecstatic emotional and musical timbre that eventually breaks down into joyous synths. It's clear the piece is trying to hold on to something, carefully nurturing it, and that is its seduction. Any recursive utterance in music should be self-conscious, and here Meadowcraft gives us the space to resolve our own internal, protean realities.

A fantastic album presented gorgeously, Offspring Bites 3: En Masse gives its charges incredible life, present and future.