Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber Music Lisa Batiashvili, Adrian Brendel, Till Fellner, Amy Freston & Roderick Williams

• 1 I. Always North of Him 01:19
• 2 II. I Was the Solitary Plover 01:42
• 3 III. As I Shook Dust from My Father's Door 01:25
• 4 Trio 16:01
• 5 I. Liebes-Lied No. 1 06:04
• 6 II. Lied ohne Worte 06:16
• 7 III. Variationen 06:22
• 8 IV. Wie eine Fuge 06:20
• 9 V. Liebes-Lied No. 2 06:34
• 10 I. There's a Better Shine 01:01
• 11 II. My Friend Tree 00:48
• 12 III. Along the River 01:34
• 13 IV. Hear Where Her Snowgrave Is 01:02
• 14 V. How the White Gulls 02:03
• 15 VI. My Life 02:14
• 16 VII. Paul 01:43
• 17 VIII. O Late Fall 01:10
• 18 IX. Sleep's Dream 01:56
• Total Runtime 01:05:34

Info for Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber Music

This album of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s chamber music and songs, mostly of recent vintage, is issued as the innovative Great British composer approaches his 80th birthday. It features an exceptional cast. Heard together and separately is the trio of Austrian pianist Till Fellner, Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili and English cellist Adrian Brendel. They are joined by London-born singers Amy Freston and Roderick Williams. The compositions include “Bogenstrich” written in 2006 as a short piece in tribute to Alfred Brendel and first played by his son Adrian together with Fellner. It was subsequently expanded into a cycle with the addition of settings of Rilke for baritone, cello and piano. The “Trio” is the newest piece, premiered in 2011, a 16-minute single movement work of elaborate patterning, gestures and responses, for piano, violin and cello. Settings of the writings of US Objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), scored for soprano and cello in 1998 and 2000, begin and close the album. As Bayan Northcott writes in the booklet, “These concentrated songs demand the utmost of their performers in precision, expression and timing. As in Webern’s settings, the few words and notes on the page can seem to imply whole worlds of thought and feeling”. This highly-concentrated chamber-scale expressivity is felt throughout the entire album, recorded at Munich’s famed Herkulessaal, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Lisa Batiashvili, violin
Adrian Brendel, violoncello
Till Fellner, piano
Amy Freston, soprano
Roderick Williams, baritone

Recorded August 2011, Herkulessaal der Münchner Residenz, Germany
Engineered by Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

No biography found.

Booklet for Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber Music