Reviews

A most engaging and rewarding experience. This is highly accomplished, heartfelt, and expressive music that I believe will appeal to all who gravitate toward contemporary music with a decidedly lyrical orientation. Warmly recommended.

In all three of the works presented here, Lister proves he has a distinctive and secure compositional voice, one that is one well worth exploring by those who are seeking new and arresting music. This disc receives my firm recommendation.

The UK-based record label Metier has a habit of picking winners, and the music of Rodney Lister is no exception. Lister’s range of emotion and sheer range of imagination is most impressive. This is a wonderful disc, faultlessly produced and recorded. Maybe it is Rodney Lister’s time for full recognition; on the basis of this evidence, I do hope so.

The music is arresting and absorbing. This release deserves a recommendation to general listeners with adventurous ears, but in particular I think that anyone fascinated by Ives, American history, and our complex fate will find the music a rewarding experience.

A wide range of tempos and dynamics asks for and gets virtuoso responses. The performances leave nothing to complain about.

This is a very carefully planned program, and beautifully executed on all fronts. Constellations of sound, performed with such beauty, make this one of the most memorable of recent contemporary recordings.

The music of Coal wholeheartedly embraces the “New” and “Avant-Garde.” I found the recording to be an intense and thought-provoking experience. If Dorone Paris has sought to express the anguish, fear, and helplessness engendered by the [various current] crises, she has succeeded in impressive fashion. And this she achieves in music that requires virtuoso execution by the musicians [who] play with the utmost skill and intensity. Recommended for the adventurous.

The influences appear multiple, clear but intelligently assumed and combined. From Chopin and Liszt to Scriabin and Debussy but all with something undoubtedly personal, [an] abundance of expression. This album reveals very well how much [of Baines’ music] remains to be heard.

This is a very interesting and impressive album. The recording engineering is sound, the music interesting, the performers are outstanding, and very clear and explanatory programme notes make this a disc to have… I feel this is a very worthwhile and creative disc.

What a remarkable talent William Baines was… there is a strong sense that he intuitively understood keyboard writing; this is complex yet confident writing. This music is never less than very attractive, certainly individual and always intriguing.

On dazzling form, Alastair White’s new opera, recorded live, creates seductive, virtuoso textures from just two singers and three pianos. Both singers dazzle in the way they despatch White’s elaborate vocal lines. To enter White’s world is to enter a parallel universe… a dazzling fantasy that explores alternative ideas and realities. All five performers are impressive in their grasp of the complexities of White’s language, and the way these complex lines are woven into a whole which transcends the virtuoso elements. The whole is profoundly seductive, a sound world that dazzles and intrigues.

Baines is shown here as a miniaturist with harmonic and expressive orientations similar to those of other composers of the early 20th century, such as Debussy and Ravel. His ability to evoke a scene within a few minutes is impressive…expressive and heartfelt, clearly exemplifying its time period.

This album is a wonderful introduction to the imagination, originality and genius of William Baines, brilliantly illuminated by Duncan Honeybourne’s compelling performance. Honeybourne is very much at home in Baines’ picturesque, atmospheric music. And then there is a glittering clarity and multi-layered textures coupled with a gorgeously warm, yet transparent piano sound.

The purpose here is to showcase the clarinet’s capabilities in this music; to bring Prorvich’s work to light; and to present well-known works in a way they have not been heard before. All this is fine, and certainly the warmth of the clarinet fits much of this music very well indeed. Everything here sounds good and is played well, and the CD is an enjoyable curiosity that will be of special interest to clarinetists and to listeners who have become somewhat jaded by the original Prokofiev scores and will welcome the chance to hear portions of them in a new guise.

What is heard here will likely be unknown to virtually anyone who does not play the recorder, and even to many people who do. This is therefore an exploratory release that should be of considerable interest. The admirable way that Turner and pianist Peter Lawson handle these works provides them with as much individuality and differentiation as possible. There is a lot to enjoy here.

Trandafilovski that he can compose for both traditional and experimental aural sonorities – and can do so for familiar instruments and familiar instrumental combinations. Trandafilovski [has] a strong how-it-sounds orientation.

Alastair White offers a score and a sensitive libretto served by a committed interpretation. The fashion-opera offers a new artistic form, more total, more immersive, full of meaning and connections. If the disc offers only one of the facets of the great show that must be the fashion-opera (we would like to attend a live performance!), it constitutes a beautiful gateway to the musical universe of Alastair White too unfamiliar in the French-speaking musical world.

All the performances are top of the range. The recording is perfect. The liner notes are essential reading unless the listener just wants to allow the music to wash over them. The entire booklet is a masterclass of design.

A notable CD. This is a very fine new release of music by William Baines (and Robin Walker). It is perfectly executed by all concerned. There is definite enchantment here.

Clarke writes with a strong sense of the choral tradition, frequently setting Latin texts, and the sound reflects this, often sounding like choral music from the 15th century or somewhere equally dim and distant but also with a very modern feel. It’s Clarke at her peak, and is breath-taking in parts.