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The Woman And The Hare
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The Woman and the Hare sets poetry by David Harsent, Birtwistle's librettist for the opera Gawain. The work had been freshly premiered when the outstanding Nash Ensemble began this their latest recording for Black Box, with the composer in attendance, as featured in BBC Music Magazine July 2001.Birtwistle's music fuses the raw and the profound in a way that joins him to a quintessentially English tradition stretching from Beowulf through Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Purcell to Stanley Spencer, Britten and Tippett. The Duets for Storab are exemplary of this, with their stark, percussive lines and hypnotic rhythms simultaneously absorbing and challenging the listener.In contrast, An Interrupted Endless Melody and the Entr'actes include moments of exquisite fragility, the former featuring a beautifully sonorous oboe line, and the latter layering delicate colouristic instrumental writing with the gorgeous and agile soprano line, ebbing and flowing between the tender and the vitriolic. The result is a powerful and essential disc of world-premiere recordings.ComposerHarrison Birtwistle Only $11.98 - Click here to buy now! |