Two new contemporary vocal albums from Clare and David Lesser on Métier

Leading New-Music label Métier Records announces two albums of modern vocal music from husband-and-wife team Clare and David Lesser, featuring the music of John Cage and Michael Finnissy. Both will be scheduled for release in the autumn.

The first album brings together several of John Cage’s lesser-known works for voice, percussion, and radios. Cage explored the possibilities of radio throughout his composing career, from the early Imaginary Landscape 1 (1939), intended as a broadcast work; Imaginary Landscape 4 (1951) – which involved radios as instruments – to the much later Europeras (1987-1991), exploiting the medium’s inherent possibilities to both provide sonic material and to disrupt ongoing musical processes. In Speech (1955) Cage focuses on ways of decontextualising broadcast news by overlaying live spoken words with multiple radio transmissions to create a sonic collage. Radio Music (1956) continues these ideas, but without the live speech element. All of the works on this album showcase Cage’s enduring fascination with chance and indeterminacy. Sculptures Musicales (1989) blends music with visual art in the production of sonic gestures suspended in time, using a wide variety of resonance producing objects, from gongs and chimes to pebbles, shells and bamboo. One¹² (1992) is one of Cage’s very last works, written in the year of his death. For solo voice, it comprises a series of numbers using the ancient Chinese I-Ching oracle, controlling a complex range of vocal sonorities and responses.

The album devoted to Michael Finnissy showcases works for soprano, clarinet and piano, many of which were dedicated to the performers. Falling into three broad groups, the repertoire consists of substantial works for soprano and piano – Beddoes (2018-24), Dino Campana (2020), Catchpenny Rhymes (1986-89, revised 2018) and Remembrance Day (2014); shorter pieces for the same duo – Oxford in 1814 (1966-67) and John Keats Operatic (1974-76); works for soprano, clarinets and piano, Blessed Be I, III, and IV (1992 – 2002) and Caithness with Descants (2006-07). Echoes of folksong, hymnals and the Romantic Lieder and bel canto operatic traditions can all be heard, while themes encompass loss, love, and the magical realism of folk poetry. As the title suggests this is a sequel to Clare and David’s 2016 release “Singular Voices” (Métier MSV 28557). It is also worth noting that this is the fourth all-Finnissy album being launched by Métier in 2024 bringing the long-running series to a current count of 17 titles.