Plural Ensemble / Fabian Panisello, Duncan Gifford (piano)

Philip Cashian
Chamber Concerto no.2 (2023)
Dances and Nocturnes (2020)
The Distance of Night (2022)
Chamber Concerto (1995)

IBS Classical IBS232025 [54’27”]
Producer Paco Moya Engineer Cheluis Salmerón

Recorded 9-10 November 2024 at 3-25 March 2021 at Auditorio Conservatorio Profesional de Getafe, Madrid

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The enterprising IBS Classical label issues a new album devoted to music by Philip Cashian (b.1963), perceptively realized by the Madrid-based Plural Ensemble with Fabian Panisello while affording a viable overview of this composer over almost three decades of creativity.

What’s the music like?

This programme is framed, albeit in reverse order, with Cashian’s chamber concertos written 28 years apart. What might now be designated the First Chamber Concerto remains one of its composer’s most significant works; a single movement whose 15 continuous sections unfold less as variations on ideas heard at the outset than as variants of each other in what becomes a constant and far-reaching metamorphosis. Resourcefully and often iridescently scored, it is a notable addition to a sub-genre which has accrued more than its share of innovative pieces.

Although it consists of four distinct (if more or less continuous) movements and is scored for similar forces (13 instead of 16 players), the Second Chamber Concerto underlines the sheer consistency of Cashian’s idiom over the intervening period. While each of these movements bears a descriptive title (derived from those of paintings in the first two instances), the music is no less sufficient on its own terms; arguably more so, given that symphonic density which emerges across its entirety while ensuring an ongoing momentum and a satisfying resolution.

In between, two smaller-scale though not necessarily slighter pieces testify to this composer’s versatility. Scored for piano quartet, Dances and Nocturnes pivots constantly between relative stasis and dynamism; its contrasted episodes making adept use of various sub-groupings, with not just the piano being given its due in several soloistic passages. Whether or not any ‘extra-musical’ aspect is at play, moreover, the ending is one of the most evocative, even ‘imagistic’ in Cashian’s output: a landscape of the mind which feels no less tangible through its being so.

Cashian’s various pieces for solo piano are mainly brief and/or with a didactic intention, but not The Distance of Night – an ‘in memoriam’ to Simon Bainbridge (colleague and erstwhile teacher) and one from 200 pieces commemorating the bicentenary of the Royal Academy of Music, where Cashian has been Head of Composition for almost two decades. What emerges is a slow barcarolle whose emotional intensification is achieved despite, or even because of, consistently restrained dynamics such as impart elusiveness and insubstantiality to the music.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. Understated it might be, Cashian’s music is resourceful and engaging while never less than idiomatically written for the forces at hand. Music, then, which deserves the widest dissemination and summons a ready response from the Plural Ensemble with Fabian Panisello, a noted composer in his own right. The CD is as stylishly packaged as are all IBS releases, and the booklet features detailed notes about each work by Louise Drewett, but it seems a pity the PE’s individual members (not even pianist Duncan Gifford) could not have been listed.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least when the sound could hardly be bettered in terms of spaciousness or definition. Those who have previous albums devoted to Cashian (2000’s Dark Inventions and 2023’s The House of Night, both NMC) should waste no time in acquiring this latest release.

Listen / Buy

This album is released on Friday 5 June 2026, You can listen to excerpts and explore purchase options at the Presto Music website. Click on the names to read more about composer Philip Cashian, the Plural Ensemble, pianist Duncan Gifford and their conductor Fabian Panisello

Published post no.2,892 – Tuesday 19 May 2026