HARRISON BIRTWISTLE (b.1934): The Fields of Sorrow for 2 Sopranos, Chorus and 16 Players, Verses for Ensembles for 5 Winds, 5 Brass and 3 Percussion (London Sinfonietta; David Atherton), Nenia: The Death of Orpheus for Soprano, 3 Bass Clarinets, Clarinet, Piano, Prepared Piano and Crotales (The Matrix; Alan Hacker).

Catalogue Number: 10K011

Label: Lyrita

Reference: SRCD.306

Format: CD

Price: $18.98

Description: The Fields of Sorrow is a beautiful, melancholy setting of a mediƦval Latin text, with a sense of slow, inexorable progression reminiscent of the composer's great, and greatly unsettling orchestral processional, The Triumph of Time. With wordless soprano soloists and spatially divided ensembles of instruments, the layers of music overlap and blend in a strange sad scene of loss and regret. Verses from a few years earlier is typical of the spiky, uncompromising sound that first announced Birtwistle as an iconoclastic new voice in British contemporary music in the 1960s. The piece incorporates a ritualistic aspect, with players required to move around during the performance, adding a spatial element and emphasizing key components of the rather strident, aggressive musical material. Nenia is an extended scene, written with the vocal acrobatic capabilities of Jane Manning in mind, and incorporating lightning changes of vocal style. Blending narrative and dramatic action, the work suggests a mourning ritual; the strange timbres of the unusual ensemble add to the sense of archaic, mythic distance of the world described in the text (by Peter Zinovieff, librettist for Birtwistle's later Orpheus opera). Texts included. Jane Manning (soprano). (Rec. Jan. & May 1973). Original 1974 Decca LP release.

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