Voyages (Debussy; Alice Ping Yee Ho)
Philip Chiu
ATMA ACD2 2844 (atmaclassique.com/en)

In 2023, Philip Chiu, pianist, Montreal resident and inaugural recipient of the generous Prix Goyer, was once again fêted, this time with a JUNO award for Fables (ATMA Classique). Boldy jumping generations, continents and styles in both showcasing and finding the synergies between the work of Maurice Ravel and the Anishinaabekwe composer Barbara Assiginaak in a single recorded artefact, Fables proved a musically satisfying enough formula that Chiu has revisited this interdisciplinary idea with 2024’s equally excellent Voyages. Here, handling the music of Claude Debussy and Alice Ping Yee Ho with equal aplomb, Chiu puts forth a “deeply personal album” that explores in sound the notion of belonging.

As a Chinese native, transplanted Torontonian and a long-time Quebecer, the reflective idea of nostalgia – perhaps for a place, time or community that may be here or may not yet have materialized – is woven throughout the recording. Take, for example, Ho’s three-part suite Hong Kong Nostalgia that through tempo, key and changing compositional forms affords Chiu opportunity to, as he states in the liner notes, “attempt to capture something elusive to me: a sense of belonging.” Just as there is a kind of searching aesthetic present compositionally in this suite – from the Connaught Centre to The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery to that city’s Night Markets – there is an introspective and wanderlust quality to Chiu’s playing as he plumbs the compositional depths through an exploration of “reflections and musings.” What is beautifully captured, however, is Chiu’s distinct touch, playful mastery of the instrument and ongoing creativity.

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Known and Unknown – solo piano works by Rodney Sharman
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
Redshift Records TK539
(rodneysharman.com)

Patrick Giguere – Intimes Exubérances
Cheryl Duvall
Redshift Records TK545
(patrickgiguere.ca)

Nova Pon – Symphonies of Mother and Child
Turning Point Ensemble; Owen Underhill
Redshift Records TK564 (novapon.com)

Rounding up some of Redshift’s recent releases we see that this West Coast label continues to bring significant Canadian compositions to light with impressive frequency. 

To enjoy the whimsical ingenuity of Rodney Sharman’s work on Known and Unknown, even before you listen to a single note or phrase played by pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa who interprets his whimsy, you may be well advised to consider everything that is part of the known world to be unknown. Such is the bewilderment and wonder of his music that the very air around you may be filled with green people, with crimson eyes and glittering silver and golden hair – a kind of ecstasy experienced should you dare let a proverbial genie out of a prismatic bottle.

For instance, in the first three parts of the recording fabled – and real – operatic characters from Monteverdi, Puccini, and Wagner – yes, even Wagner, whose dogma was cast in bronze – are turned inside out. Genders are not merely reversed but inverted so that characters are imbued with wholly new personalities. 

Now imagine what this might do with your senses, set free of convention. Suddenly – even if you are stuck in conventions that are long dead – you can revel in beauty of an unexpected kind, be awestruck by love of a different sort, experiencing music played – no! sung – by a pianist who uses a tangy inimitable harmonic language to drive you to the delightful madness of a new, full-blooded romanticism, like a spell cast by Sharman’s bewitching compositions.

On Intimes Exubérances Cheryl Duvall’s highly inflected interpretations of Patrick Giguère’s laudable compositions are of a different kind than the pianistic expressions of the music reviewed above. The repertoire is, of course, equally impressive but as befits the tenor and meaning of the work, what is impressive here is not just the magnificent and reactive pianism on show, but also Duvall’s maturity.

Her performances of the four sections of this work possess a stunning èlan: magnificently ethereal in Partie I – à la frontière d l’intangible, by turns, tenderly delicate and rhythmically rippling in the Partie II – tisser le présent and with a biting drive in Partie III – corps, hors de temps. Finally, Partie IV – lueurs en voix is brilliantly virtuosic, with an understanding of the striking light and shade of this movement.

All told, the excellent sound and annotations tilt the balance dramatically in favour of Duvall’s serious and enlivening artistry. 

Composers who venture into the realm of chamber work do so at their own peril, especially when they de rigueur must live up to the brilliant standards set by older contemporaries and look over their shoulders at past masters such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók. But Nova Pon, for one, has gone past intimidation to produce a long piece World Within, and the significant five-movement Symphonies of Mother and Child.

It is clear from the first strains of World Within that the composer knows the importance of embracing the past while going her own way. The swirling gestures at the outset are like jolts of Bartók that quickly give way to Pon’s forceful and expressive sound world. Likewise, the organically arranged five movements of Symphonies of Mother and Child give the correct impression of being an intensely felt work from solemn to invigorating ideas, with ample contrapuntal interplay to keep the narratives rich and layered. 

The performers of the Turning Point Ensemble show how masterfully attuned to the vision and artistry of Nova Pon and how deeply they have interiorised this music in their idiomatically turned-out recital.

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Brent Lee – Homstal
Brent Lee; Various Artists
Centrediscs CMCCD32223 (cmccanada.org/shop/homstal)

Windsor Ontario composer and media artist Brent Lee’s work explores relationships among music, image and technology, especially through multimedia performance. A professor of Integrated Media in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor, he’s composed music for orchestra, interactive media and film soundtracks. 

Lee’s recent work integrates electroacoustic composition, improvisation, saxophone performance, videography, Max computer programming and field recording. His Homstal project reflects those interests. Homstal, the Old English word meaning “home” or “homestead,” reflects that much of the work on this project was accomplished at his studio in rural Ontario. While the six Homstal album tracks are studio productions, each can be presented as an audiovisual environment allowing for improvisation and site-specific variation. 

In his liner notes Lee acknowledges that Homstal “grew directly out of my work with my friends in the Noiseborder Ensemble and I am grateful for their generous collaboration. … Martin Schiller plays electric bass on Overtro and Aaron Eichler plays the long snare drum sample used in DOT 1000.”

A quiet, chill, non-metric chamber jazz vibe presides over the album articulated by Lee’s eloquent sax playing and his chosen harmonic textures. The opening track for instance begins with soft spacialised sax key clack sounds, joined by a wandering cantabile soprano sax melody featuring sustained notes delicately ornamented with alternate fingerings. A seemingly un-metred treble melody on upright piano is then added; in turn the whole is deftly contextualised by several layers of electronic sounds. 

A dreamy Southwestern Ontario mist seems to have settled on Lee’s Homstal music.

Anthony Rozankovic – Origami
Louise Bessette
ATMA ACD2 2895 (atmaclassique.com/en)

Friends in Montreal have spoken for years about composer Anthony Rozankovich so it’s a delight to finally have a collection of his music to display some of this talent. Origami is an album of his music for solo piano performed with enormous dedication, virtuosity and sensitivity by Louise Bessette. 

Some of these works began life as film scores and others were composed as concert pieces; most are between three and four minutes long but a few are longer. Accessible but sophisticated, Rozankovich’s music displays his deep understanding of the building blocks of music: this is tonal, lyrical music but not at all facile or predictable. The listener is rewarded over and over again with gorgeous moments of introspection and nostalgia, complex counterpoint, some grit and even some humour. The composer has a fondness for waltz-like episodes but always he shows us his delicious mastery of harmony, taking us in unexpected directions and into curious sidebars. 

As a favourite, I might choose the thoughtful nostalgia of Avenue Zéro or Errance but I also love the fusion-inspired Andalouse Running Shoes and the quirky and rhapsodic Pigeon Biset (Rock Dove) which is available online but not on the disc itself. If there’s a shortcoming to this collection, it might be that the music is too interesting to use as background music and requires time to enjoy. It’s time well spent.

What Brings You In
Leslie Ting; Various Artists
People Places Records PPR | 045 (peopleplacesrecords.bandcamp.com)

Toronto-based violinist and interdisciplinary artist Leslie Ting’s creative output has incorporated elements of installation and theatre as much as pure musical expression. Her unusual career trajectory is also of note. After working as a licensed optometrist, from 2013-2017 she served as Associate Principal Second violinist in the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra.

Ting’s theatre work Speculation layered the music of John Cage and Beethoven with a monologue and projections to tell the story of her mother “slowly losing her vision, while [Leslie] makes a career change to pursue her dream of becoming a professional musician.”

An unconventional, ambitious debut album What Brings You In is much more than a violin recital of contemporary repertoire. Calling it, “A violinist confronts the noise of her psyche in an electroacoustic soundscape,” Ting operates both as a director and performer in the project, employing talk therapy, hypnotherapy, dreamwork, sandplay, somatics and reiki in her creative process with her co-musicians. 

Having been produced as a live theatrical event and a web-based installation, for this five-track audio recording of What Brings You In Ting has collaborated with several Canadian musicians: Germaine Liu on percussion and amplified sandbox, while Matt Smith, Rose Bolton and Julia Mermelstein provided electronic sounds, the latter two also contributing compositions.

The album also features Ting as eloquent solo violinist, beginning with Linda Catlin Smith’s delicately austere violin and percussion composition Dirt Road. Bolton’s Beholding for solo violin and electronics follows the composer’s sometimes turbulent internal therapeutic transformation. Mermelstein’s Folds in Crossings couches Ting’s violin performance in orchestral sounding electronic textures, culminating in a final peaceful violin sigh.

MC Maguire – Dystophilia
MC Maguire Orchestra/CPU
Neuma 190 (neumarecords.org)

The other day when I heard my neighbour’s pounding bass (something pop, disco or otherwise annoying) I responded by turning Dystophilia, M.C. Maguire’s new release, up to 11; the battle ended soon after. He offers sound-pressure supremacy that out-cools whatever tired torch song or clichéd show tune my neighbour enjoys. As a pacifist I don’t relish these battles, and only engage when the next-door volume is too high for my peaceful soul, but Maguire’s Yummy World (track one, followed by Another Lucid Dream) provides sonic delight as well as firepower. That said, I caution against the all-out assault: this is rich and textured music, so while high-volume might be your thing, you’ll possibly miss some of the depths if you indulge in your kink too much. You do you, though, no judgement.

Gone are the days, I think, when record executives would target sound thieves in their war on audio crime (aka creativity). There’s just way too much borrowing or sampling today. They all make a mint on streaming platforms, anyway, enjoying profits from the Justin Biebers of the industry. How can they prevent Robin Hoodlums like Maguire from using a tune like Yummy to generate the mind-blowing soundscape presented here? Do I hear the Beebs? Arguable. What I definitely hear is pop-mageddon, a kind of hyper-layered riff on every aspect of the aesthetic. 

One reviewer references (or steals, I think) John Oswald’s term “plunderphonics;” Oswald got in trouble with another Michael, the late King of pop. I’d be disappointed to learn either that Maguire had received warning shots across his bow, or worse, had bowed to the power of Big Music’s money managers and received permission to extrapolate the stuff he uses/sends up/improves. Anyway, the result is exciting, even if not used in battle.

Jan Järvlepp – Sonix and Other Tonix
Various Artists
Navona Records nv6603 (navonarecords.com)

Ottawa-based Jan Järvlepp is an experienced composer, freelance and orchestral cellist, teacher and recording technician. After completing a doctorate in composition and 20th century avant-garde music, he began composing in the neo-tonal style instead, incorporating accessible classical, contemporary, world, folk, jazz, pop and rock music styles for various instrumentations. 

Sonix, composed for the Mexican Ónix ensemble, combines elements from two of his earlier works. Performed here by Trio Casals with guests Chelsey Menig flute and Antonello DiMatteo clarinet, there’s exciting listening throughout with opening fast tonal minimalistic lines, a middle section with supportive piano background below calming lyrical flute, and repeated accented descending short lines to closing loud rock chord. Trio Casals perform Trio No. 3, Järvlepp’s three movement musical protest against the rise of surveillance. The first movement Surveillance Cameras Everywhere features repeated piano rhythms with accented instrument shots imitating surveillance cameras snapping pictures. 

Nishikawa Ensemble performs Shinkansen, a two-movement ride on a Japanese bullet train musically driven here by short percussive hits. Members of the Benda Quartet perform Trio No.5, for violin, viola and cello, Järvlepp’s protest over the COVID shutdown rules. Strength in the Face of Adversity has a classically-influenced violin melody, and the constant rhythmic backdrop keeps the tense music and listener moving during the shutdown. 

The solo piano Insect Drive was composed at home during lockdown with Järvlepp’s self-described “treble sounds and bouncy rhythms.” It is performed here by Anna Kislitsyna. Trio Casals returns for In Memoriam, a respectful, caring, sad lyrical compositional tribute for his late brother.

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Realm
Allison Burik
Independent (allisonburik.bandcamp.com)

As a gender-fixed male, I bear some shadowy traits that may include misogyny, and certainly some measure of toxicity; these are my boulder on the slope, if you’ll allow it. And how might this disclosure bear on this review? I can’t deny that I was reluctant or even unwilling to engage with Realm, featuring the music and performance of Allison Burik. Such subtext as one can read in the liner notes and source materials of the disc’s inspirations would indicate a staunch, maybe even aggressive, feminism in the author, with a certain degree of warning of the potential cost of being a disrespectful male. Track 6, Heiemo og Nykken, references a folk tale wherein an attempted seduction of N by H (the dark spirit of the deeps) ends badly for H(im). 

But, you see, it’s all deeply beautiful, if mostly sombre. The multi-abled Burik plays and sings overlays of bass clarinet, alto sax and flute, as well as guitar. Their voice is true, although there is a risky low low alto vocal that pairs in fantastic fragmenting unison pitch with the bass clarinet. Beware such witchery! It’s potent. 

I am enamored of the kind of instrumentalism where beauty of tone results from musicianship, and only in its service. Such is the approach I hear here; I believe we are all in some ways vain, but mostly it’s just better to be good. Burik makes the instruments work, with surprising and fascinating techniques.  

I could go on, but you won’t benefit from reading more description, and there are confines I would exceed. Better you should grab the disc, the beauty outbids the fearsomeness. The final track is built around a poem by Sappho, and it’s stunning.

Three Cellos
Kenneth Kirschner
Greyfade (greyfade.com)

Recently-founded creative record label Greyfade has taken contemporary music production and financial compensation ethics to a new level; they are refusing to stream. Not on any platform will you find their presentations; they offer downloads only. As described by Greyfade’s founder Joseph Branciforte when explaining some of the reasoning behind the download-only access, he refers to the resurgence of vinyl being the most intimate, commercial-free listening experience: “…in the digital realm, we believe that the direct download model most closely mirrors this private interaction and should be the preferred mode of exchange.” By avoiding the financial dissuasions of streaming, the label is committed to an artist-led production that hopes to fairly compensate creators for their work. 

Although the hard copy of the accompanying linen-bound book was not available for this review, the PDF featured 87 pages of casually written blog-like descriptions of the process, beginning with the uncertainty of converting Kirschner’s digital composition Three Cellos to Branciforte’s painstakingly detailed transcriptions, to then being precisely interpreted by cellist Christopher Gross. The book may not be a gripping read for the average listener, but it does shed some interesting light on the process, the details and the complexities of composing and then notating from various MIDI sources. In the composer’s own words: “The primary challenge with transcribing my work is, of course, the total lack of metric structure… It’s not that the meters are strange or difficult – it’s that they’re just not there at all.”

 This album will take some gentle peeling back to reveal the qualities it hopes to share, namely the dedication and craftsmanship that was poured into this translation from digital composition to acoustic interpretation. I might have enjoyed having access to the original MIDI compositions in order to fully appreciate the transformation. The nine tracks bear similarities but repeated deep listening slowly unfolds the nuances and range of energy played with supreme skill, precision and sensitivity by cellist Gross. A standout track is Part 3, the most dynamic and accessible in form.

Melia Watras – Play/Write
Melia Watras; Various Artists
Planet M Records PMR-005 (meliawatras.com/playwrite-album)

In the midst of contemporary classical music releases that tend to bank on a cerebral approach to music, here is an album that requires listening with one’s heart. Exploring the relationship between words and music, and close collaborations with composers, performers, writers and poets, Play / Write unfolds an exquisite world in which beauty and dreams flirt with sorrow. Compositions by Melia Watras (also a superb violist), Frances White and Leilehua Lanzilotti focus on strings and involve texts by Herbert Woodward Martin, James Pritchett, Luce Irigaray and Michael Jinsoo Lim (who also plays violin) forming a close bond between what is felt and what is just implied.

The album opens with Watras’ 5 Poems of Herbert Woodward Martin (for narrator, violin and viola). Watras has a particular knack for string writing, expertly using colours and timbres to create melodic and textural vignettes that underline the flow of Martin’s wonderful poetry, spoken theatrically and amusingly by Carrie Henneman Shaw. Performances by Watras and Lim are sensuous and beautiful, particularly in Frances White’s As night falls for violin, viola, narrator and electronic sounds. This poignant piece follows the memories of the female narrator (Sheila Daniels) as she lays on her deathbed. The boundaries between a dream world and reality are dissolved with a juxtaposition of the background and foreground sounds, that is so brilliant we feel intimately involved in its setting. The music adds a visceral dimension to the beautifully simple text by James Pritchett, with string segments going in and out, conversing or lamenting, and never letting go of the intensity of the experience. Lanzelotti’s to be two for violin and viola ends the album’s sonic journey in serene surrender.

Project Earth: The Blue Chapter
Iris Trio
Centrediscs CMCCD 33924 (cmccanada.org/shop/cmccd-33924)

Newfoundland is poetry and birds and surf, rocks and accents and music. This disc, from the Iris Trio, performing the music of jazz pianist Florian Hoefner, and including the poems of Don McKay, provides a window opening into the experience of being there, reminding the listener to seek what is wild or untainted, if anything of that nature remains to be found. 

Artistic activity that attempts what Blue Chapter does, whether effectual or not, always makes me sad. Fortunately in this instance, it doesn’t also provoke grumbles; rather, I can just listen and forget that the world these artists want to help us appreciate may already be gone. Consider the lament McKay has written for the now extinct Great Auk, whose calls were described in words by naturalists; they died out before the advent of sound recording. Spoken word followed by a musical soundscape, both words and musical cries make us lament what we missed. The sadness isn’t that we don’t know what the cry was like, but that we never will. In Song for the Song of the Great Auk the pathos is undeniable. Kudos to all three players (Christine Carter on clarinet, violist Zoë Martin-Doike and pianist Anna Petrova) for their confident and calm expression. 

In his note in the liner material, McKay ruefully comments on his approximate success in staying “on cue” (“with the beat” for the musicians among us). It’s fun to imagine him struggling on the learning curve with the band, and managing at a far better rate than his self-assigned 70%. 

And there are fun tracks too, there are joyful expressions, there’s a Newfie kitchen party among the nesting birds on the islands. Forgive me for feeling Blue, but that is the colour of this chapter, the first, says the publicity material, of three. We look forward to the next two.

Walter Kaufmann – Piano Concerto No.3; Symphony No.3
Elisaveta Blumina; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin; David Robert Coleman
CPO 555 631-2 (cpo.de)

After fleeing Nazism in 1934, Czech-Jewish Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984) composed and conducted for radio in Bombay and films in London, then became the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s first music director (1948-1957) before teaching ethnomusicology at Indiana University. When I reviewed the first-ever CD of his music (The WholeNote, September 2020), performed by Toronto’s ARC Ensemble, I wrote, “(I) hope that this superb CD will inspire more recordings of Kaufmann’s music.”

That’s exactly what happened! That CD so “fascinated” Berlin-based conductor David Robert Coleman that he decided to record four works selected from Kaufmann’s manuscripts in Indiana University’s library. Three of these works reflect Kaufmann’s studies of Indian ragas, melodies and rhythms, admiringly incorporated into his essentially European, late-Romantic compositions, just like the pieces recorded by the ARC Ensemble.

Symphony No.3 (1936) and An Indian Symphony (1943) date from Kaufmann’s years in India. Soulful woodwind solos, pulsating strings and dramatic brass and percussion recall the music of solemn Hindu rituals and jubilant dances that I heard during three trips to India. Six Indian Miniatures (1965), dominated by long-lined, wistful woodwind melodies over slowly throbbing strings and percussion, ending in boisterous revelry, testify to Kaufmann’s enduring love of India’s music. 

There’s nothing “Indian” about Kaufmann’s colourfully exuberant, Ravel-like Piano Concerto No.3 (1950), two extroverted, percussive movements framing a contemplative Andante, brilliantly performed by Elisaveta Blumina. Conductor Coleman, echoing my 2020 review, hopes this CD will help Kaufmann’s music “find the recognition it deserves.” So do I.

Ebony Chants
Paolo Marchettini
New Focus Recordings FCR402 (newfocusrecordings.com)

Ebony Chants, featuring the music of clarinetist Paolo Marchettini, is a day in the life of the second-most listenable woodwind (after bassoon). It opens with the first of Due Canti: Il canto del giorno, and closes, after much business and play, with the suitably named counterpart, Il canto della notte.

  For several works Marchettini is joined by  Meng Zhang and Ka Hei Chan on clarinet and Tommy Shermulis on bass clarinet. The parts are rotated democratically (if the listing order on the jacket indicates what it seems to). They are all excellent, and the material is mostly in brief segments lasting in the range of one to three minutes. Most delightful are his Cinque Fanfare Napoletane, which reference popular traditional melodies with affection and humour. Nothing is ever trite, although on the overly-serious side I am less of a fan of Nec Clari, a somewhat foggy multi-track overdubbing of the composer’s own playing. At over six minutes I lose attention (a product of my times, I admit), and I find his tone on bass clarinet to be less than compelling. Shermulis, by contrast, sounds terrific both as ensemble member and soloist for Entrée, a tough-sounding solo work. I’d love to hear him take a swing at Soft, Franco Donatoni’s work for the same instrument. 

Sad to say, the online jacket material includes only Marchettini’s bio details, not those of his collaborators, a detail I mentally file alongside other examples of sub-optimal digital publishing.

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Kamala Sankaram – Crescent
Kamala Sankaram; Andie Tanning; Ludovica Burtone; Joanna Mattrey; Mariel Roberts
Neuma 187 (neumarecords.org)

Listening to Crescent by Kamala Sankaram it is important not to be blinded by her use of post-production techniques and devices. Focus your attention instead on the theme of the programme: the all-too-prescient demise of humanity by its own hand raised as if in a defiant gesture aimed at mastering the fate of spaceship earth.

The programme is divided into two works – Crescent, a hypnotic and lyrical chronology of the destruction of the beautiful ecology of the planet that has forgotten its celestial creation, terrestrial beauty and artful history. Cue the poetry of W.B. Yeats here. This is en route to destruction by manufactured scientific pseudo-progress. This demise is tracked by Sankaram’s mesmerising narration of her Heat Map series, to show how over the past hundred years or so the planet is hurtling towards destruction by global warming. This part of Sankaram’s programme ends with the clairvoyant, vocal-and-percussion driven song Crescent delivered in a sotto voce wail.

The second part of the programme features Sankaram’s voice emerging through a tremendous arco introduction by a string quartet. This work is entitled 5 Rasas (rasa means essence or taste). The pregnant vibrancy of the bowed introduction redolent of bells, electronica and field recordings of the twittering songs of birds, has a mystical pastoral quality. Sankaram’s vocals emerge from this prerecorded passage like an electrifying polytonal scherzo, performed with an almost mesmeric processional rhythm.

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Takács Assad Labro
Takács Quartet; Julien Labro; Clarice Assad
Yarlung Records YAR59691 (yarlungrecords.com)

The Takács Quartet was formed almost 50 years ago in 1975 in Hungary. Now based in the United States, original member András Fejér (cello) is joined by Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes (violins) and Richard O’Neill (viola). World-renowned for their performances of traditional mainstream string quartet repertoire and some contemporary works, here they expand outside the classical realm with guests Julien Labro (bandoneon/composition) and Clarice Assad (piano/vocals/composition).

The seven compositions jump around stylistically yet still connect. Circles by Bryce Dessner begins with Labro’s calming bandoneon changing to fast florid virtuosic lines supported by contrasting strings with detached ascending/descending lines and rhythmic shots. Labro composed Meditation No.1 during the pandemic. The lyrical bandoneon plays held notes above string lines, tight conversations with strings, bellows shakes and tango stylings referencing Labro’s respect for Piazzolla and Saluzzi. 

Multi-talented Clarice Assad is represented by three works here. She composed and performs Luminous from Pendulum Suite for solo piano where the fast percussive piano start leads to modulating lines drawn from Brazilian jazz supporting her rhythmic scat-like vocalizations. Constellation is a three-movement work for piano and violin to be played in any order. The final track, Assad’s Clash, is inspired by society’s stressful social tensions. Intriguing strings at times sound like solos yet all fit together. A great mix of snippets of styles and tempi, I like the accents and string plucks making a “clash” effect, and the closing dark, grim cello and bandoneon interchanges. Intriguing works by Milton Nascimento and Kaija Saariaho are also included, making for a brilliant, wide-ranging and colourful disc.

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