New French Song has created a whole new repertoire of songs by British composers. The artists commissioned twenty exceptional British composers, some of whom were well established, others of whom were yet to receive the recognition they deserve. The composers were asked to set French literature of their choice from the past two hundred years. The result is a fascinating rainbow work covering all the major literary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, overlapping into the twenty-first century - Romanticism, Symbolism, Surrealism, Cubism, Modernism and post-Modernism.

Works for solo flute by some of the most respected British composers of the present day - performed with consummate skill on a variety of instruments by the virtuoso flautist Nancy Ruffer, who has been at the forefront of contemporary flute interpretation, giving numerous first performances - including the UK premiere of Ferneyhough's Superscriptio at the Queen Elizabeth Hall - and commissioning new works from composers such as Chris Dench, Michael Finnissy and others.

Keith Barnard is a British composer whose music, rooted in spiritual exploration, both Eastern and Western, and is what is generically and rather loosely called "New Age" but which description does his thoughtful and deeply felt compositions a disservice. This world premiere recording is finely executed by American pianist Jeffrey Grossman.

The music on this album is rooted in the music of Herat, Afghanistan, which both Veronica and John studied in the 1970s. Abdul grew up in Herat and has performed this music throughout his career, so he knows it intimately. The music captures an era of peace and normality, seen by many Afghans as a golden age before the recent turmoil, upheaval and war.

Modern music for clarinet by composers with very different voices. Simply exceptional music performed by an exceptional musician.

Michael Finnissy is amongst the most celebrated of contemporary British composers and his music is featured on many of our CDs. This selection of works for chamber group and solo instruments written between 1977 and 1990 displays both his formidable talents and those of Topologies. These pieces are inspired by the disappearing musical cultures in places affected by ethnic cleansing (Kurdestan and Azerbaijan) and "discredited" musical styles such as free jazz and expressionism.

Eight piano works by McCabe, now one of the most respected figures in British music, played by Gramophone Magazine award nominee Tamami Honma. "A splendid release. Make no mistake: Honma is a superb player. The composer provides his imprimatur of her in the booklet, but hearing her one appreciates immediately how technically able and interpretatively alert she is. Very strongly recommended." - Guy Rickards (Gramophone)

Christopher Fox is one of the leading lights in British contemporary music. He wrote four pieces with the title "Straight Lines in Broken Times" - this is the second (the third is included on Metier msv 92059).Each piece, though otherwise totally independent, spins it's music out of a continuous stream of notes. The other major works on this album are all expertly performed by the Ives Ensemble.

This is a disc of music for chamber ensembles and solo performers written by two of Britain's leading women composers, who also happen to be mother and daughter. Sparklingly presented by Okeanos, comprising several leading contemporary music performers.

Classical Music

Emsley's music relates to time and timelessness. To Kantian philosophy to conceptual thought to nominal reality. In simpler terms, music itself can transcend time, being the universal language of Pythagoras and modern science - the Divine Art. Played by Topologies, one of the UK's foremost contemporary music ensembles, and featuring Ian Pace on solo piano tracks.

The solo piano music of Ives represents an extraordinary achievement. Experimental is a word often associated with it. But experimental in what sense? Certainly he was exploring a wholly unique and personal style. Ives' music is by turns, exploratory, powerful, sensitive and transcendental always wholly consistent within it's own, sometimes highly unusual terms. These qualities are there in abundance in his two crowning achievements the first and second sonatas. The studies and others orbit round these like planets to twin suns. VOTED GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE TOP CHOICE 2012 (for the Concord Sonata)

Laurence Crane's music is thoroughly contemporary, but has hardly a dissonance in the whole 80 minutes of this CD. His music can be described as super-minimalist, but that would ignore the incredibly fine transitions of harmony and time embedded in his works. Ultimately this is music for the post-modernist age, and it can have no better advocate than Michael Finnissy, himself one of the foremost composers of our time.

FINNISSY The History of Photography in Sound • Ian Pace (pn) • METIER 77501 (5 CDs: 326:48)


The music of English composer Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is difficult to categorize. It is exceptionally multifaceted in both its surface and substance. It is music that is filled with its own original ideas (and textures that sound like nobody else), but at the same time it is constantly making explicit references to other music. His music’s difficulty ranges from nearly unplayable fiendish complexity to exceptional plainchant-like simplicity, frequently within the same piece. Finnissy’s notation is likewise extremely varied, and almost all his scores exist in his astounding calligraphy.


The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001) is Finnissy’s largest piano work at nearly 5.5 hours in length. Any attempt to summarize the piece in a brief review will fall significantly short of pointing out even a fraction of its facets. The pianist Ian Pace has been associated with Finnissy’s music since he (Pace) was in school, and he recorded this work shortly after its complete premiere about decade ago. For whatever reason, it is only now appearing on CD, but its release is a major event for those interested in Finnissy’s work or significant piano literature. Many of the individual movements/sections were composed as separate projects/commissions and premiered by different pianists. This excellently-produced CD box set also includes an extensive set of booklet essays by Pace (who is also a musicologist), and an even more extended version filled with musical examples is available online. In addition to his concert career (as a new music specialist), Pace is a very outspoken and caustic critic of academic musicology, and in recent years has become a very public advocate for investigation into the many sexual abuse scandals in British music schools.


Finnissy is himself a pianist, and his large catalog is dominated by works for the instrument. For him it has clearly been a source of continual musical inspiration, and the role of the piano in even his non-solo works is also extremely significant, even including an opera where the “orchestra” is simply a single virtuoso pianist. Each of the 11 sections of The History bear a descriptive name, ranging from “North American Spirituals” to “My parents’ generation thought War meant something” to “Kapitalistisch Realisme (met Sizilianische Männerakte en Bachsche Nachdichtungen).” As is nearly always the case in Finnissy’s work, the piece abounds with references and quotations to other music: from Bach to 19th-century music hall songs, and from Berlioz to Inuit traditional music. Sometimes these references are very explicit, but often there is simply a fragment of a melody embedded within the “tenor line” of a larger texture; these would certainly go unnoticed were it not for the composer’s trademark arrows carefully identifying the sources in the score. One of the booklet essays specifically addresses the quotations, and it challenges—in a typically Pace-ian confrontational style—the general critical response to these myriad references as nothing more than a sort of “found object tourism.” Pace breaks down all the different types of quotations into various categories, examining how each category of material is “weighted” in different ways throughout the sections of the work. The external references made in The History are not purely musical, either; literature and philosophy also make appearances. The sixth section, “Seven Immortal Homosexual Poets,” is conceived as a musical version of a poetry anthology, and each poet is treated in turn, wordlessly.


The composer has given Pace’s performances and this recording his enthusiastic recommendation, so it is to be assumed that the performance is definitive. No other pianist (aside from the composer himself) has been more closely associated with Finnissy’s music, and thus Pace brings to the project a true mastery of the composer’s interpretative challenges. Like many of Finnissy’s pieces, there is enough content in The History to keep one engaged through a near lifetime of listens. Certainly there are precedents for large-scale piano works of this scope, or even significantly longer ones: including numerous work by Sorabji and Frederic Rzewski’s “novel for piano,” The Road. In most cases of such large scale works, the pieces end up being quite representative of their composer’s preoccupations and principal artistic concerns. The History is no exception, and thus stands as a major work of a major composer. For those who are completely unfamiliar with Finnissy, they may wish to start with shorter works, almost all of which have been recorded. However, for those who wish to take an unforgettable journey, this is a work, like much great art, that embraces everything and, in the process, tells us something about ourselves.


FANFARE: Carson Cooman

Mary Dullea is one of the most amazingly skillful pianists of today and presents a truly distinctive and groundbreaking recital. The pianist writes: These piano pieces demonstrate a fertile wide range of voices, sonorities, inspirations and exploration of the performer's role. They all call on the virtuosity of the pianist, not only at the keyboard but, in some cases, extending that even further, incorporating voice and other extended techniques. Each work marks a point in the composer's path, whether a relatively early work, a response to a significant event or a commission request.

A beautiful and evocative combination, the flute and harp combine especially well in these modern romantic pieces by leading British composers of the mid twentieth century. Emily Beynon (flute) and Catherine Beynon (harp), both now leading and highly-regarded musicians, provide an exquisite performance in their debut CD which has been one of Metier's most popular recordings.

The three composers featured on this CD are in themselves leading lights of the contemporary music scene in the UK, and their works (of which these are first recordings) very fine examples of the modern string quartet, all extremely accessible.

FERNEYHOUGH Flurries. Trittico per G.S. Incipits. Coloratura. In nomine a 3. Aligebrah • Roger Redgate, cond; Ens Exposé • METIER 28504 (58:50)


For a celebrated and prolific composer, Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943) is poorly represented in the catalogs, with just a handful of discs, and some important archive recordings unavailable. These Metier recordings were made in England in 2003, and they appear now thanks to the Divine Art company in North Yorkshire. Frustratingly, four of these pieces can also be found on competing CDs. The exceptions are Aligebrah for oboe and strings, written in 1996 (the longest piece on the CD at 18 minutes), and Coloratura , a short piece for oboe and piano.


This composer’s music looks fearsome on the page, but to the ear it’s accessible. The meaning is what matters, and Ferneyhough says his music is about “life.” I’d agree: life as it’s lived, thought about, struggled with, reconsidered, is more like Ferneyhough than Pärt.


The earliest piece here is the Coloratura from 1966, an enjoyably non-serial, modernist duo, with the players diverging, and occasionally finding common ground. All the other pieces are far more recent and much more complex on the surface. Flurries (1997) starts out like Carter, but entropy leaves an isolated voice, muttering irritably, 10 minutes later. The Trittico (1989) is, like the celebrated Cassandra’s Dream Song , an example of Ferneyhough’s manically multivocal approach to solo-writing. Life gets wrestled with, and once more leaves you alone with the sound of yourself. Incipits (1996) explores instrumental relations in the context of a series of “new beginnings” every minute or two, but no successful relations are established, and the tonal variety doesn’t add enough interest for me.


Aligebrah and the In nomine (2001) make the CD worth buying for Ferneyhough fans, though some of these other performances lack the final ounce of extremity. Aligebrah meshes oboe with wild lines from nine solo strings, before, as usual, ending with a solitary sound. In nomine carries on a centuries-old tradition, and is brief, to the point, and effective.


Ferneyhough uses music to express complex ideas, but as he points out, music is different from the other arts in the way it exists culturally and in terms of what one can get away with stylistically, with enough people. His own art will therefore have a limited audience, though soloists with an interest in transcendental technique will always be interested. There is wit and an extreme version of sensuality built into his work, especially when experienced live, but this music is often hard work all round. Ferneyhough collectors will want all Ferneyhough CDs, including this one. If you have no Ferneyhough, first get hold of the choral recital on Metier 28501, which may convert you.


FANFARE: Paul Ingram

This is a very important recording, as it is the first time the original piano quartet version of the Eroica Symphony has been recorded. (it should not be confused with the arrangement by Ferdinand Ries published 50 years later). This anonymous arrangement was made at Beethoven's insistence (though he had requested a string quintet) and published in 1807, three years after the orchestral premiere. The writing is far superior to that of Ries in the later version, and this work stands as a fine and magisterial piano quartet in it's own right.

John Ramsay is a professor of geology by profession but also a very serious composer, of both chamber and orchestral works. His style is chiefly tonal though he does utilise serial techniques on occasion. The four string quartets are perfect examples of the best of 'post-modernist' music, employing no artificial boundaries, but being pure self expression using the most appropriate musical forms. They are to some degree programmatic and thus Romantic in idiom too and thoroughly deserve a place in the chamber music repertoire.

Metier continues its faithful dedication to contemporary music by adding this remarkable release to its already abundant collection. The double-disc release is devoted to the American composer George Rochberg’s (1918-2005) two violin works – the Violin Sonata for violin and piano, and the Caprice Variations for solo violin, previously issued under the same label in 2003.

Rochberg is a composer who embraces a broad spectrum of compositional styles and genres throughout his long span of musical career. Plunged into Schoenbergian serialism in his early years, Rochberg, after the death of his son in 1964, discarded the technique and turned to a musical language that mixed abstract chromaticism with tonal idioms. The Violin Sonata, written in 1988, is a telling exemplification of his late style. The profound emotional expression in all four movements is characterized by the constant employment of atonality and tonal variety.

The Caprice Variations, in which Rochberg masterfully blends Modernist and Classical elements, is a beguiling, if not bemusing, composition. The one-and-a-half-hour long solo violin work begins with a theme that incorporates traditional tonal harmony in the manner of Bach’s solo violin partita – diatonic sequences, balanced phrases, and perfect cadences. Musical humor continues by the composer echoing the styles of our great predecessors such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler – some more tacitly, some more overtly. Apart from appreciating Rochberg’s musical humor and wisdom, one may well wish to treat the variations as an entertaining test of musicianship while listening.

The marvelous recording quality captures both the music’s refined details and the sense of ample space. The informative booklet, written mainly by the violinist himself, devotes its central focus to the portrait of the composer’s personality and aesthetic philosophy. Being a long-term musical collaborator and an intimate comrade of the composer, Skærved would be the ideal one to take up the job. Not only is the general description of the performer’s rehearsing and recording procedures included, the booklet also encompasses some interesting and thought-provoking conversations between the musicians that enable the readers to have a better understanding on both the composer’s compositional process and the performer’s reception towards the music. I would have welcomed some more detailed information on the composer’s general compositional style(s) and the analytical commentary of the two works in this album so that less experienced listeners could also be benefited.

After all, an outstanding recording that provides wonderful listening experiences.

-- Danny Kim-Nam Hui, ConcertoNet.com

Rooted tonality spiced with dissonance.

The Welsh composer William Mathias died at the grievously young age of 58. I knew his name because of the Sinfonietta on a Pye LP (GSGC 14103). His music came to mean more to me when in 1975 I taped from BBC Radio 3 the first broadcast performance of This Worldes Joie. It was conducted by the composer who directed massed choirs – including children’s choirs - and the BBC Welsh Orchestra. The soloists were Kenneth Bowen and Janet Price. I listened obsessively to this extravagantly orchestrated work on tape and became increasingly impressed and won over. His writing for voices is orally intriguing and inventive; the same applies to his startling way with the percussion. There are echoes of Britten but the music breathes a deeper humanity and a more yielding emotional air. You can now hear that piece on Lyrita SRCD325 having first been issued on an EMI Classics LP (ASD3301). After that choral broadcast from the Fishguard Festival I scanned the Radio Times and added recordings of his orchestral pieces Requiescat, Litanies, Vistas, Helios and Laudi. Hearing his Elegy for a Prince I was further won over by the lapidary Baxian orchestral technique and ceremonial-magical atmosphere - the aural equivalent of druidic tapestry in motion. As for his Dance Overture it is irresistibly catchy and has more rumba in it than the Arthur Benjamin genre pieces.

Mathias wrote three symphonies and three string quartets. We can hear the three quartets conveniently assembled on this disc by a quartet who performed the Third Quartet and who were then invited to tackle all three. This they did at three separate recording sessions so there is no sense of a gabbled or ill-thought through results.

The First Quartet is dedicated to Alun Hoddinott and his wife Rhiannon. It inhabits a sombre world afflicted, to varying degrees of intensity, by anxiety. The language stands between the gloomier reaches of the ensemble writing in Warlock's The Curlew and the later Bartók quartets. This is leavened but never completely dispelled by a Bartokian didicoi wildness of the violins at 16:38. At 19:20 the violin primo is memorably heard high in the stave whistling wistfully. The music ends in a not unclouded tenderness. The music of the four movement Second Quartet takes wing although always feeling the pull of sorrow. The solo violin carries this flighted buoyancy (tr. 2 4:02) but there are also vigorous chafing insect-stridulant voices. The second movement smacks of folk music veering between the Celtic muse and the Appalachian hills. There’s also a Britten-like pizzicato which in this close recording pings in the ears with physical impact. The andante returns to the gloomy undertow of the First Quartet. The finale has the exuberant complexity of the Tippett Concerto for Double String Orchestra as well as the seething weave of insectiform lines. Mathias's last quartet – The Third - was not intended to be his last. He had accepted a commission from the Lindsays but death intervened. The third is in three movements. Lyrical release can be found in the first movement as can springy Tippett-like ideas often set amid potently grave reflective writing. The finale begin dramatically with a sort of suppressed shriek and soon develops a strongly etched rhythmic energy - a rough magic that also ends the piece.

Interesting that all three of these serious works have an Eastern European leaning amid a rooted tonality spiced with dissonance.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Among the so-varied styles of music being written and constructed today, there remains a vibrant and strong lyrical tradition, focused on the English school. Proving that such work is still fresh and relevant, here are exquisite pieces for clarinet, recorder and string quartet by Robert Crawford and the late John Veale. Modern idioms which also incorporate classical and Romantic traditions. We regret to note that Bob Crawford died on January 26, 2012.

One of Britain's most accomplished, celebrated and prolific composers, Michael Finnissy here plays a programme of works based on folk music from several countries.

In June 2026, Metier proudly presents composer Michael Ellison's ground-breaking set of Three Transcultural Operas: Mevlana (Say I am you), Deniz Kustu (The Sea Crossed Fisherman), and bozlak opera Binbogalar Efsanesi (Legend of a Thousand Bulls), all performed with the Hezarfen Ensemble, the leading Turkish contemporary music ensemble co-founded by Michael Ellison. Ellison spent ten years working in Istanbul and has imbued these operas with an unprecedented level of integration of Turkish culture, music, and traditional instruments, seamlessly blending them with contemporary music in a unique and personal idiom. Ellison's is a music of singing melody, colour, and contrast, evocative atmosphere, and emotional breadth and has been described as "beautifully crafted, robust, and absorbing" by the American Record Guide. A new, 2026 High Resolution edition of Mevlana (originally released in 2014 on Metier) joins the newly recorded performances of Deniz Kustu and Binbogalar Efsanesi to bring together a first complete triptych of operas. Alongside the audio recordings, Metier will release the complete digital video productions of Deniz Kustu and Binbogalar Efsanesi operas recorded at the Istanbul Music Festival. Mevlana (Say I am You) was the first opera to include Turkish instruments and vocal styles, blended here with Western operatic tradition and based on the poetry of Rumi, the historic mystic. This hypnotic work dramatically traces the story of the transformation of Jelaluddin Rumi (Mevl�na) from ordinary scholar to ecstatic mystic at the hands of wandering dervish Shams-i Tabriz and features the dynamic vocal ensemble VocaalLAB Nederland with the Hezarfen Ensemble. Ellison's second and third operas are compelling tales that resonate with the global challenges of today, both adapted from novels by Yasar Kemal and directed for stage by Simon Jones. Powerful and dramatic, Deniz Kustu (The Sea Crossed Fisherman) tells the tragic tale of village-loner Selim and orphaned street-child Zeynel, integrating traditional Turkish instruments, contemporary elements, and Western opera singers. It's shocking events and environmental repercussions reflect our own current concerns. The opera also celebrates Istanbul, it's seas and marine life, contrasting the real and fantastical seascape of the Bosphorus with the dizzying, teeming metropolis of Istanbul and one small fishing village.�"The Sea-Crossed Fisherman is an arresting picture of Istanbul, from it's glittering dawns to it's seething underbelly, and Kemal's... lyrical prose is a good fit for the American composer Michael Ellison... " -James Imam, Opera Magazine. Powerful and moving, Binbogalar Efsanesi (Legend of a Thousand Bulls) is based on the masterpiece novel by Yasar Kemal about the decline and disappearance of the last nomads in Turkey, as their millennia-old pastoral way of life is destroyed. The culmination of an 8-year European Research Council project, "Beyond East and West,"�Binbogalar Efsanesi is a unique work, sung in Turkish and�integrates the dramatic, virtuoso style of traditional bozlak Anatolian folk music voices with contemporary language. Hale Tetik, of Andante Magazine, wrote: "The love, sorrow, grief, and rebellion, emanating from the voice of�bozlak�singer Fatma Aydogan, were engraved in our hearts." Michael Ellison has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras and festivals across Europe and the US, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Variances, Radio France, Grenoble Festival, New York Youth Symphony, Siemens Foundation, amongst many others. He was principal investigator on the European Research Council project Beyond East and West: Developing and Documenting an Evolving Transcultural Musical Practice (2015-2023) and the PI of the AHRC-Istanbul Development Agency supported project Transtraditional Istanbul. He teaches composition at the University of Bristol, England.