Classica

After Nicolas Hodges (on Neos), the cerebral Ian Pace delivers the entire pianistic corpus of Ferneyhough, enhanced by the short piece El Rey de Calabria, completed in 2018. The whole set reflects very well the stylistic trajectory of the composer, from the pointillist Epigrams of 1966 to the eruptive expressiveness of Lemma-Icon-Epigram (1981), the jewel of the series.

It is not within the scope of this review now within our competence to separate these two versions on the criterion of accuracy, though in our opinion the sound of the Neos set is less dry, and warmer, that that produced here by Métier in the Turner-Sims hall at the University of Southampton.

[translated from the original French]

—Jeremie Bigorie