On Record – Naresh Sohal: Vocal & Instrumental Music (Heritage Records)

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cfJane Manning (soprano); hMargaret Cable, jElizabeth Turnball, hSarah Walker (mezzo-sopranos); fAlan Hacker, fEdward Pillinger (clarinets); hkRohan de Saram (cello); fPeter Seymour (perc); kAnanda Surkalan (piano); aLondon Sinfonietta, dAmbrosian Singers, gEnglish Chamber Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis; iSingcircle / Gregory Rose; eLondon Contemporary Players / Elgar Howarth; cNash Ensemble / Justin Connolly; jNew Music Concerts / Robert Aitken; bNorthern Brass Ensemble / Lionel Friend

Naresh Sohal
Aalaykhyam Ia; Chiaroscuro Ib; Kavita Ic; Surya (all 1970)d; Hexade; Night’s Poet (both 1971)f; Aalaykhyam II (1972)g; Poems of Tagore II (1976)h; Inscape (1979)I; The Unsung Song (1993)j; Foray (2006)k

Heritage Records HTGCD122-3 [2 discs, 151’36”] English texts included
Remastering Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Live performances and broadcasts (London unless stated): d20 April 1971, St John’s Smith Square e13 July 1971, Goldsmiths College; c1 February 1972, Queen’s College, Birmingham; g 1 May 1973 and a 25 September 1974, Queen Elizabeth Hall, b 5 January 1977, BBC Studios, Manchester; h 22 August 1977, Purcell Room; f 8 February 1978, Wigmore Hall; i 18 November 1979, The Round House; j 28 November 1993, Du Maurier Theatre, Toronto; k 16 June 2006, Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues the extensive series of archival recordings of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this double album featuring vocal and instrumental works, most heard in their premiere performances by a roster of artists synonymous with contemporary music during this period.

What’s the music like?

Although previous issues on this label have tended to focus on those large-scale pieces which established or consolidated Sohal’s reputation, his output abounds in works with more modest dimensions or forces. This release collates various of these in parallel vocal and instrumental sequences as amount to a representative overview of their composer’s career. These underline the continual evolution of his idiom, whatever its stylistic changes, while also making the case – if such were needed – for their revival in what has now become a very different music scene.

To a poem from Tagore’s The Gardner (set a half-century before by Zemlinsky as the opening movement of his Lyric Symphony), Kavita I allows Sohal’s aural imagination free-rein with its fraught instrumental movements leading into the eloquent vocal setting. Surya sets texts from the Shakuntalam and Rig Veda in music dense and evocative, charged and incantatory. Night’s Poet draws on Tagore’s The Fugitive as it veers from the speculative to the ecstatic before an alluring close; Poems of Tagore II also draws on that collection in sensuous music with cello as much a vocal element as the two mezzos. Inscape has recourse to Tagore’s Lover’s Gifts in its hieratic aura with fastidiously variegated choral textures, then The Unsung Song draws on Tagore’s Gitanjali in an ethereal exploration of the beyond necessarily remaining unresolved.

As to the instrumental selection, Aalaykhyam I proceeds in starkly contrasted episodes and a disjunction eschewed in Aalaykhyam II with its subtle but never anodyne evolution of motifs that evoke a more inviting ‘abode’. Coming between these chronologically, Hexad favours a methodical yet cumulative unfolding across six movements such that the furtive anticipation of the first meets the assertive fulfilment of the sixth; while Chiaroscuro I turns brass quintet into a succession of overlapping, often conflicting gestures that merge into a vibrant if short-lived recessional. From here to Foray is to jump ahead some 35 years with music of greater expressive focus, distilled into an Adagio then Allegro as might equate to ‘song’ and ‘dance’ were it not for a shifting of ideas and moods across what amounts to a most unlikely diptych.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. Part of the fascination with Sohal’s output are the ways he tackles – and almost always solves – different considerations in successive works, taking the solutions through to the next project so that a consistency of method becomes evident alongside those of form or expression. The performances lack for little in conviction and have been expertly remastered to make them sound more than adequate. More than this, however, it extends the discography of musicians whose contributions to the cause of new music cannot be gainsaid.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. The booklet features insightful (if occasionally contentious) notes on each piece by Utsyo Chakraborty along with a detailed biographical overview by Janet Swinney. What has already proved an invaluable series hopefully has several further instalments still to run.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the name to read more about composer Naresh Sohal

Published post no.2,898 – Tuesday 26 May 2026

On Record – Kreutzer Quartet, Peter Sheppard Skærved – Robert Saxton: String Quartets & Solo Violin Sonata (Métier Records)

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Kreutzer Quartet [Peter Sheppard Skærved and Mihailo Trandafilovsky (violins), Clifton Harrison (viola, Quartet no.3), Morgan Goff (viola, Quartet no.4), Neil Heyde (cello)]; Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin, Sonata)

Robert Saxton
String Quartet no.3 (2009)
String Quartet no.4 (2018)
Sonata for Solo Violin ‘Reflections in Time’ (2023)

Métier Records MEX77138 [73’23”]
Producer Peter Sheppard Skærved Engineer Adaq Khan

Recorded 2019 at St. George’s, Headstone, Harrow (String Quartet no.3); 2024 at Hastoe Village Hall, Tring (String Quartet no.4, Sonata for Solo Violin)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The enterprising Métier Records label continues coverage of Robert Saxton on a release featuring his Third and Fourth String Quartets, with his Solo Violin Sonata, in readings by Peter Sheppard Skærved or the Kreutzer Quartet who had commissioned and premiered two of these pieces.

What’s the music like?

String quartets range across the greater part of Saxton’s composing, but that once designated his ‘First Quartet’ from 1982 was long ago withdrawn and its place taken by the Fantazia of 1993. His second quartet, 1997’s Songs, Dances and Ellipses was written for the Chilingirian Quartet’s 25th anniversary while recorded by the Kreutzer for its miscellany Northern Lights (Métier MSV28507). Subsequent quartets were written for and premiered by the Arditti and Kreutzer quartets, with which latter Saxton’s collaboration stretches back over three decades.

Comprising five movements, the Third Quartet is a telling example of the interplay between serial and tonal practices characterizing Saxton’s music these past two decades. Departure and Return traces its methodical trajectory away from and back to the note D, with Winter Light a varied intermezzo before the animated scherzo Dance; after this, Sea Ground is a passacaglia whose sustained build-up and gradual subsidence makes way for Continuing Journey – a finale such as revisits the opening movement in a spirit of purposeful renewal.

Its seven movements on a larger scale, the Fourth Quartet is described by its composer as a ‘‘Creation/Life cycle’’ as inferred by the opening Wavebreak, its motivic constituents duly intensified in the passacaglia Time Spiral while etherealized in Nightscape. Finding their respective cues in Siegfried Sassoon and T. S. Eliot, the ensuing sections are akin to scherzo and slow movement. Hymn then becomes an extended introduction to the final Daybreak, revisiting previous material though now with an unforced yet affecting sense of affirmation.

Between these pieces, Reflections in Time is a sonata for solo violin whose five (untitled) movements take inspiration from landscapes and seascapes as drawn by Sheppard Skærved, the work’s commissioner and dedicatee; his residing on the opposite side of the Thames also influencing this music as regards the eddying of its textures and the temporal (though never scenic) vistas effected by the five pitch-centres heard during its course. For all its technical intricacy, this is music as vivid or as imaginative in its evocation as any Saxton has written.

Does it all work?

It does. While it would be naive to suggest the relationship between tonal and serial facets of these pieces as equating to that age-old duality between ‘heart’ and ‘brain’, there could be no doubting the expressive spontaneity which arises out of their formal cohesion. A balance that, achieved by (surprisingly?) few composers from Saxton’s generation, makes his more recent music (at least) as appealing as it is engrossing. Sound leaves nothing to be desired, with the composer’s pithy annotations complemented by the violinist’s more discursive observations.

Is it recommended?

It is. Anyone who has enjoyed such recent pieces as the symphony Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh) will find these three works no less representative of Saxton’s maturity, and one looks forward to more recordings of what has become an individual and fascinating output.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Métier Records website. You can click on the link to read Arcana’s review of Saxton’s Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh & The Resurrection of the Soldiers, or click on the names for more on the Kreutzer Quartet, Peter Sheppard Skærved and composer Robert Saxton

Published post no.2,897 – Monday 25 May 2026

On Record – Matthew Schellhorn – Odd Sympathies (First Hand Records)

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Matthew Schellhorn (piano)

Thurlow The Will of the Tones (2004)
Bussey Floreat Coll. Reg. (2021)
Burrell Pentecost (2017)
Homage to Haydn (2009) by Tim Watts, Colin Riley, Cecilia McDowall, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Michael Zev Gordon and Jeremy Thurlow
Riley Joplin Jigsaws (2018)
Percy Chop and Change (2018)
Spicer Two Pieces for James (2010)
Briggs Willows and Jitterbug (2014)

First Hand Records FHR181 [83’03”]
Producer Simon Weir Engineer Ben Connellan

Recorded 2-4 December 2022 at Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

First Hand Records issues this latest recital from Matthew Schellhorn, a collection of pieces by present-day composers with whom he has collaborated (often extensively) that amounts to an inclusive overview of his musical preoccupations and sympathies – odd or otherwise.

What’s the music like?

This album opens at the beginning with Schellhorn’s first large-scale commission – a scintillating while demanding workout by Jeremy Thurlow that wrests musical cohesion out of pianistic fragmentation prior to its subtly conclusive coda. By contrast, Martin Bussey contributes a brace of pieces drawing repose from a tribute to author Philip Radcliffe and a lively coranto with that to conductor Philip Ledger. Diana Burrell’s work is the most substantial, utilizing the plainchant Veni Sancte Spiritus as cantus firmus for this three-movement sequence – the opening one a little too discursive in its unfolding, but the central panel distilling meditative calm then the finale building to a powerful apotheosis before subsiding into limpid serenity. Very different in every sense is Homage to Haydn, a six-piece sequence – intended to be played in the order here – that was written to commemorate the bicentenary of Haydn’s death in 2009. The constituent pieces are however no less revealing of the personas of their respective writers; an anthology saying much about how this totemic figure is regarded by a representative sextet of British composers with notably different idioms and aesthetics.

One of these pieces being by Colin Riley duly leads into his own commission – six brief yet resourceful pieces taking their cue from four distinct rags by Scott Joplin: suffice to add that these latter can feel more oblique in their allusions than their anagrams. The work by Robert Percy started out very differently from that heard here – Schellhorn and its composer having refashioned it into a sequence of mobiles (eight out of a potential 10 included) fastidious of texture and elusive in content: there being evidently more than 40,000 possible permutations at least means it need never sound the same way twice. There could be nothing less arbitrary than birthday-tributes to the Reverend James Potts by Paul Spicer, a lively jaunt followed by a pensive pavane that underlines the love of both composer and recipient for the clavichord miniatures by Herbert Howells. Finally to Roger Briggs, the American composer whose harmonic eloquence then rhythmic energy are gratefully seized on for what is a wholly apposite conclusion to this programme.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. Listeners will inevitably prefer one or other composer to another, but there is no doubting the respect in which they hold Schellhorn, nor of the conviction which he brings to all this music. It helps that his instrument (not specified in the booklet) has been so faithfully captured, its tonal definition enhanced with the spacious surround-sound mix made possible by Dolby Atmos. As these pieces are either world premiere recordings or first commercial recordings, a substantial amount of new piano repertoire is made available herein.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. Schellhorn contributes detailed and highly personable annotations, and one looks forward to more such anthologies from this source. No doubt he includes many of these pieces in his recitals, though there is no reason why other enterprising pianists should not follow suit.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the First Hand Records website. Click on the name to read more about pianist Matthew Schellhorn

Published post no.2,896 – Sunday 24 May 2026

On Record – Jeremy Huw Williams & Paul Fan: The Blessed Damozel: Songs of Arnold Bax (EM Records)

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Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone); Paula Fan (piano) with Theodore Buchholz (cello, Folk Tale)

Sir Arnold Bax
The Blessed Damozel (1906); A Milking Sian; The White Peace (both 1907); Shieling Song (1908); To Eire (1910); Roundel (1914); Parting (1916); Far in a Western Brookland; Folk-Tale; Jack and Jone; When I was One-and-Twenty (all 1918); The Market Girl; Rann of Exile; Rann of Wandering (all 1922); I Heard a Soldier (1924); In the Morning; On the Bridge (both 1926); Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba (1931)

EM Records EMRCD086 [84’55”] English texts included
Producer Jeremy Huw Williams Engineer Wiley Ross

Recorded 11-13 April, 6 May 2022 at Jeffrey Haskell Recording Studio, University of Arizona

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its coverage of songs by Sir Arnold Bax with a further volume (see also Arcana’s review of the previous volume, From The Hills of Dream by Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan.

What’s the music like?

As is relatively well known, the writing of songs was a preoccupation of Bax earlier on in his composing which had all but ceased by the mid-1920s. Unlike their earlier release, Williams and Fan here focus on songs previously recorded (some of them several times) though it does include a major first recording along with Folk-Tale from the last year of the First World War. Theodore Buchholz does justice to the dramatic climax which emerges out of this latter piece’s sombre rumination, thus making the subtitle ‘Conte populaire’ more than a little tendentious.

That first recording is The Blessed Damozel – not a song or even a scena, but a melodrama or, as Bax described it, ‘‘musical illustration’’ for reciter and piano of the famous poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Melodramas were a frequent occurrence during those early years of the 20th century, though this is its composer’s single example and even that was likely intended as the blueprint for a work with orchestra that failed to materialize. As it stands, the combination of measured yet rarely uneventful speech and piano writing as responds to the text as if ‘caught on the wing’ results in a curiosity well worth hearing. The present account holds the attention and, given the absence of any orchestration, there seems little need for any further recording. Those who are partial to Rossetti should find Debussy’s earlier cantata to be more substantial.

A glance at the listing above confirms the 16 items featured here range widely across the two decades when Bax’s song-writing was in fullest flow. It is not over-much of a generalization to suggest those written up to and including the ‘Great War’ are art-songs in a direct lineage from the composer’s French or German forbears, and those that came afterward are ‘popular’ songs or – as in with Jack and Jone – arrangements of traditional songs written at the behest of specific performers. The (surprisingly?) skittish setting of Thomas Hardy’s On the Bridge was followed with just two songs – Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba forming part of   a James Joyce anthology, masterminded by Arthur Bliss, which failed to benefit this author financially. Orchestral and chamber works were predominant in Bax’s catalogue henceforth.

Does it all work?

It should have done. Those having heard his previous Bax release will know of Jeremy Huw Williams as a devoted Baxian whose occasional misjudgement of expressive nuance is more than compensated for with thoughtfulness and insight. Unfortunately, the highly reverberant sound is inappropriate – to the extent those songs (tracks 5, 13 and 14) whose texts could not be reprinted for copyright reasons are frequently inaudible as recorded. Neither Paula Fan’s forthright pianism nor Theodore Buchholz’s burnished cello playing come through unscathed.

Is it recommended?

It should have been. The booklet is well up to EMR’s customary standards, with its detailed biographical overview by Graham Parlett and notes on each of the songs by Lewis Foreman. Paula Fan’s untimely death, in 2023, should have made this release a more fitting memorial.

Listen / Buy

You can listen to clips from the release at the EM Records website, and purchase options at the Presto Music site. Click on the names to read more about the artists Jeremy Huw Williams, Paula Fan and Theodore Buchholz, and the Sir Arnold Bax Society

Published post no.2,895 – Saturday 21 May 2026

In concert – Platoon presents Caroline Shaw & Andrew Yee @ King’s Place

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Caroline Shaw (viola, vocals, keyboard), Andrew Yee (cello)

King’s Place, London
Tuesday 18 May 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Picture (c) Anja Schüts

Hall One in King’s Place may seat several hundred people, but for the duration of this concert Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee were flatmates on its stage. Such was the intimacy created through their 75 minutes of music making, it felt as though the audience were eavesdropping on a private musical conversation between close friends.

Shaw and Yee have known each other for many years, a bond celebrated on their collaborative album Or, The Whale, a new release on Platoon. This event was ostensibly the album launch, but the reduced lighting and onstage plants gave a front room aesthetic, showing the album to be something much more intimate and meaningful for the artists to share.

Both Shaw and Yee are comfortable with free improvisation, a quality evident as they completely reordered the published programme. Though on the face of it this was a classical concert the evening had a pleasing ‘genre neutral’ feel. Electronic touches, folk-based rhythms and phrases, Americana and jazz all mixed freely within the sphere of Yee’s cello and Shaw’s viola, not to mention the keyboard, where she manipulated vocal melody and harmony. Here was creative machine learning, applied to music looking as far back in time as it did forwards.

The two played passionately, though at times the quiet dynamic had the audience leaning forward in their seats, keen to catch all the musical whispers from Yee’s feather light string crossing or Shaw’s lightly applied tones. A firmer tone was applied to their own The Light After, a passionate utterance, while both performers combined effectively for music from their collaboration on the score for Moby Dick. Shaw’s Limestone & Felt explored a satisfying combination of North Carolina quilt makers and subtle instrumental accompaniment. Meanwhile there was an extraordinary arrangement of Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Here Shaw replaced the piano part with her own manipulated vocals, a daring move that worked against the odds.

Reaching back into the distant past was Shaw’s In manas tuas, a striking reimagining on solo, manipulated viola of the original Tallis work. Sonically placed at the other end of a vast cathedral, the performance effectively picks out the details of the original with emotionally charged laser beams.

This was a moving ode to friendship, the two performers effectively finishing each other’s musical sentences as we looked on gratefully.

Published post no.2,896 – Friday 22 May 2026