Reviews

immensely attractive work… superbly idiomatic, inventive writing. Okeanos approach these scores with imagination and wit rooted in a firm and secure technique.

Here is a CD which exemplifies Metier’s unique flair for presenting contemporary British music to best advantage. The vocal texts are of the highest quality. This is an excellent, highly desirable portrait CD of an interesting composer, who has preserved an ever open, enquiring attitude to music and its performance.

Metier is to be congratulated on producing the first commercial CD of Usher’s music. On the strength of the disc she certainly deserves to be better known and I hope it does well. {The vocal works] show the sensitivity Julia Usher has for the English language and what talent she has for the dramatic situation… showing genuine flexibility with a voice more her own.

The performances throughout are excellent, as is Metier’s sound, clear and crystal like the Mediterranean.

This is a remarkable achievement. The recording quality is superb, as is the cover art. Fascinating listening. It is evident at all times that Mead knows exactly where he is going. Another triumph for Metier.

[Crumb has a] fertile imagination for all the timbres and effects that can be extracted from a piano – with the help of the odd paper clip or glass tumbler, of course. Mead manages them superbly. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

scrupulous selection of vocal works from the 1980s and 1990s

[Rihm’s] austerity is matched by the focused singing of Clare Lesser… She is commendably sparing of vibrato. Rapport is of the closest, with Metier’s recording and production exemplary.

This is said to be the first recording devoted to music by Sadie Harrison, and it shows her to have a compelling, distinctive, and passionate compositional voice. The performances on this disc are generally very good, and the recorded sound excellent… this disc is definitely worth exploring.

Rhythm and lyricism held in perfect balance in a young Australian composer’s rewarding programme of chamber and vocal works. The playing is shapely and eloquent, the recording well-defined to a fault. This is a debut which leaves you eager to hear more from such a versatile and accomplished composer.

I am indebted for the discovery of this remarkable Australian’s music. The title work, the string quartet Taking Flight… [is] I think, a masterpiece. Great performances all, and nicely recorded.

A highly recommendable recording.

Music of real individuality and purpose, in excellent recordings.

Harrison’s music is often beguiling and has vivid extra-musical resonances. She’s in the category of what could be described as domesticated modernism – tonal composers who are aware of modernist gestures while aware of the danger of audience-alienation. Harrison is a composer to look out for.

individual and unusual.

I’d be pleased to hear more of this interesting young woman’s work.

This is a most worthwhile and imaginatively programmed disc, with fine music expertly played.

This programme gives a remarkably clear picture of Peter Maxwell Davies’s art. Guy Cowley and Ian Pace’s playing is strong and well controlled. All the playing, indeed, is excellent – the Kreutzer Quartet’s pure tone and fine intonation are great assets in the pared-down idiom of the two Little Quartets. With realistic, sensitive recording, this is a must for anyone interested in Maxwell Davies.

Recorded with an ideal combination of spaciousness and clarity, and with a booklet note combining overview and observations from the players, this is a timely disc – and not just on account of Maxwell Davies’s somewhat depleted representation in the current catalogue.

The 1961 String Quartet is a masterpiece, uniting the neo-medieval and neo-Mahlerian in Davies’s totally original way. RECORD OF THE YEAR 2003