Great Women was commissioned by the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival to mark its 50th anniversary in 2020 with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland, An Comhairle Ealaíon, which also gave financial support. The release of the recording in June 2021 coincides with the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival 2021. The piece is a celebration of the strong, remarkable Irish women who have helped shape the social and political landscape through their striving for equality and liberation. Among those whose words are set are pioneering patriots such as Countess Markievicz and Rosie Hackett, alongside such equally inspiring contemporary figures as Irelands former Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, extracts from whose inaugural speeches are embedded in the textures of the live and tape parts. The tape part includes readings from Markievicz letters and excerpts from Rosie Hacketts account of events leading up to the 1916 Rising. The readings were recorded by renowned soprano, Elizabeth Hilliard, for whom this work was written and to whom it is gratefully dedicated. Almost all sounds on the tape derive from those recordings while the live part uses many extended vocal techniques such as overtone singing, fragmentation of text, vocalise, etc.

Both composer and performer have earned recognition for their fine work in the contemporary music field, whether in concerts, recordings, teaching or adjudication. Gráinne Mulvey was appointed Professor of Composition at Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama in 2018. Her music has been performed and broadcast across the globe, she has received numerous commissions and several of her works have been recorded by both Métier and other labels. Elizabeth Hilliard is an exceptional singer based in Dublin, widely regarded as an able, imaginative and dramatic interpreter of new music.

John McCabe (1939-2015) was renowned as both a pianist (a Haydn specialist and supporter of many contemporary composers) and as a composer of very fine music in several genres. In 1985 he visited EMI Studios in Sydney Australia to make this album of music by Australian and American composers. However for several reasons it was put to one side and when the studio closed it was believed that all copies were lost. Last year a cassette copy was found, transferred and remastered. It is a wonderful collection of works, performed with McCabe’s usual dazzling virtuosity and deep musicality. The album comprises works of differing styles best summarized as ‘post-modernist’ – individual, inspired, contemporary but not unfriendly to audiences; some are impressionist such as the title track by Peter Sculthorpe; jazz-inspired (Rochberg’s Carnival Music) and all are fine additions to McCabe’s recorded legacy.

This fabulous new album, co-produced with Bavarian Radio, presents top German piccolo virtuoso Natalie Schwaabe in an international program of recent works for ‘the screaming twig’ as the instrument is sometimes known in orchestral circles. No screaming here, though the instrument’s upper stratospheric registers are fully exploited – these works are modern and freely composed but will still be attractive to conservative listeners with elements of traditional tonality and jazz and utilizing the middle and lower ranges of the piccolo which can be ethereal and smooth. The range of pieces is wide, from the somber ‘Lachrymose’ for solo piccolo, to the bright and buzzy sonata by Gyöngyosi, and the new setting of The Pied Piper story by Kanefzky. Natalie Schwaabe was born in Tokyo, grew up in Hong Kong, studied in London and obtained her degree in Munich where she is now based, playing with the prestigious Bavarian Radio Symphony as well as enjoying a busy solo and chamber music career. Her regular partner Jan Philip Schulze is carving out a fine reputation in the new-music field with recordings for several labels, and is sought after to accompany many top vocalists.

Both enjoying successful and acclaimed international reputations, the two Iranian composers here represent two generations of musicians trained in the West. Hormoz Farhat, born in 1928, was the first Iranian to study music in the USA, taking classes with Darius Milhaud, Lukas Foss and Roy Harris. He worked at UCLA for many years before returning to Iran. His music is in many genres and has been performed in the USA and throughout Europe. His two substantial piano sonatas are major contributions to the genre. Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour (b.1974) carries on this tradition and studied in the UK and Denmark, where his new opera is to be premiered in 2020. His work draws on Persian influences and subjects in a truly cosmopolitan way, demonstrated well by the pieces on this album. Mary Dullea enjoys a very busy career as a soloist and chamber musician and regularly performs and broadcasts in many countries. Her discography is exceptional and demonstrates her support and championing of new music. Her pianism and musicality as well as remarkable virtuosity makes her an ideal interpreter.

“Mary Dullea, unfailingly grasping this music’s interest, shades her playing beautifully.”
- Stephen Pettitt (The Sunday Times)

Gemini is one of the leading British chamber ensembles and has supported many contemporary composers over the years. Their association with Philip Grange goes back to the mid 1990s. Philip Grange’s earliest published compositions date from the late 1970s, and include Cimmerian Nocturne, written for Peter Maxwell Davies’ Fires of London – and inspired by Grange’s studies with Max. His compositions have been performed around the world to great acclaim and many have been recorded. The most recent work here is Shifting Thresholds completed in 2016 on a Gemini commission to celebrate the composer’s 60th birthday. This work incorporates techniques new to Grange’s work and is potentially a classic in the making. Apart from Homage to Chagall, all works on this album are receiving their first recording. Each work pays homage in name but also by absorbing elements of each artist’s work – composer John Casken, painter Marc Chagall, and writers Edward Thomas and Samuel Beckett. Gemini was formed in 1973 and presents a richly varied repertoire from standard works from the 18th through 20th centuries, contemporary music, and theatre music. The ensemble has a busy educational aspect to its work carrying out workshops and concerts for communities and schools including music from the 11th century to the modern day. It has won several prizes including an Arts Council Incentive Award. The ensemble was also an instigator of the Hidden Sounds festival in London, which evolved into the influential ‘Women in Music’ organization.

Ed Hughes is a master of composition to the highest degree; his works have been premiered and performed around the world and include operas, music for silent films, chamber, orchestral and piano works – and those just on his recordings for Metier. He has received commissions from London Sinfonietta, The Opera Group, Brighton Festival, Glyndebourne and major ensembles. He won the British Composer Award for his Chaconne for Jonathan Harvey. This new album reflects his deep interest in ancient music and poetry (as demonstrated by Sinfonia for chamber orchestra), and also the landscape and natural features of Sussex (Cuckmere: A Portrait) but however local the inspiration, Hughes’s work has universal appeal.

Hafliði Hallgrímsson (b.1941) is widely regarded as Iceland’s pre-eminent composer, as well as a highly accomplished cellist. He studied with Enrico Mainardi and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and was cellist with many leading chamber ensembles until devoting himself full time to composition in 1983. Also, in 1970, Hallgrímsson played the (uncredited) cello solo on “Atom Heart Mother” by Pink Floyd. His voice is extremely distinctive and within modernist styles can communicate ‘serious’ emotions of loss and sorrow and also intensive wit and charm as demonstrated so well by his Klee Sketches on this recording. The Klee Sketches are dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skærved, the performer here. Peter Sheppard Skærved is known for his pioneering approach to the music of the past and our own time. Over 400 works have been written for him. Peter’s exhaustive work on music for violin alone has resulted in research, performances and recordings of cycles by Bach, de Bériot, Tartini, Telemann, and, most recently, his project, ‘Preludes and Vollenteries’, which brings together 200 unknown works from the seventeenth century. His dedicated support of contemporary music (especially with his ensembles, the Kreutzer Quartet and Longbow), is considerable. He is also an accomplished painter and a published writer on many subjects.

Tuneful, exciting, peaceful, humorous, fascinating- music for woodwind ensemble can be all of these and this new album presents serious and lighter pieces of impressionist and post-Romantic inclination from the 20th century. It includes the premiere recording of the beautiful Suite en Quatre by French female composer Claude Arrieu. FOUR is a project that represents the beginning of a longer journey for London Myriad. It is the first of an audio pair: one which champions existing music and one which carves out new repertoire for wind quartet. The second recording of the pair will be a commission of new works for the same combination and will be realized in the future as FOUR|2. The woodwind quartet in particular provides a unique opportunity for composers to closely explore the individual and very different characteristics, timbres and ranges of each of the four instruments, offering a diverse and evocative scope of compositional colors. Here, from the beautifully textured quartets by Arrieu, Bozza, and Francaix, to the whimsical Travel Notes by Richard Rodney Bennett, the ensemble provides joyful and brilliantly performed pieces that will be appreciated by all.

"I see sketches of islands / half revealed / like deities / in a haze." From Ní Chinnéide’s opening words, Ghost Songs takes the listener through the earthly and the otherworldly, the liminal and the ethereal, and through encounters and vistas, real and imagined, in Ireland and beyond. The album is built around nine choral pieces, by contemporary Irish composers Seán Doherty, Rhona Clarke, and Michael Holohan. Each piece is preceded by the poem on which it is based, and these are interspersed with thematically resonant readings by Paula Meehan, Dairena Ní Chinnéide, and Marina Carr. Carl Corcoran reads texts by poets unknown or no longer living, including W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) and Irish-American modernist Lola Ridge (1873–1941), while Dairena Ní Chinnéide lends her voice, and her dialect, to the words of fellow Irish-language poet Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916–77).

The music of the Cuban-American composer Orlando Jacinto Garcia inhabits a sonic universe of its very own, one where the musical landscape is constructed in order to evoke a thorough suspension of time. The three works on the present release correspond almost precisely to the past three decades of Garcia’s career and thus present for the interpreter and listener alike a kind of survey of his development. Garcia’s mentor and teacher was Morton Feldman and the aesthetic of Feldman and his inspiration are preoccupations which color several of Garcia’s compositions. Garcia has composed over 200 works for a wide variety of genres and instrumental combinations, and has established himself firmly in the new-music world with his time-suspending, haunting explorations. Born in 1954 in Havana, he moved to the USA in 1961. As part of his great success he has received four Grammy nominations awards and honors too many to mention and his music has been recorded for 14 labels as well as Metier. A dedicated educator, Garcia is Professor of Music and Composer in Residence at the School of Music, Florida International University. The Amernet String Quartet has been described by The Strad as a group of exceptional technical ability’ and praised by the New York Times for intelligent and immensely satisfying playing’. The ensemble is Quartet in Residence at Florida International University and its performance schedule has taken it all round the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The Amernet is a strong advocate for new music and also for high quality neglected works of the past.

Thomas Fortmann is a Swiss composer who in the 1970s had a very successful career as a writer of rock music – and also as an international golfing star! Over one hundred songs were recorded and released in 27 countries. At age 26 he abandoned this career to study formal composition and has since built a reputation - and almost a cult following – for eclectic and unique music which fuses postmodernism, serial techniques, rock and jazz with hints of circus and cabaret styles too. This new album contains chamber works and one organ piece; the title of the organ work and the album reflects the fact that while not strictly ‘serial’, each piece uses all twelve motes of the chromatic scale. Pieces are inspired by literature (Murder of a Buttercup) and historic events (Grafeneck 1940) as well as personal experiences. A number of excellent European ensembles perform this program of works in the unique Fortmann style.

French-Lebanese composer Naji Hakim is renowned as one of Europe’s most gifted composers and has written a good deal of music for organ. This album includes one of his most celebrated works ‘The Embrace of Fire’ as well as music for the unusual combinations of organ/violin and organ/recorder. The flexibility of the fine 1871 William Hill organ at the Church of the Holy name in Manchester, England, allows perfect balance in these as well as power in the organ solo works. Some works are accompanied by a plainsong chant on which the instrumental work is based. Simon Leach won his first major prize while at college, playing ‘The Embrace of Fire’ and has since given premieres of several Hakim works, developing a close affinity to the composer and his work. Simon has been organist at The Holy Name, Manchester for several years and in September 2018 takes up a new post as organist at St. Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Edinburgh. John Turner and Benedict Holland are well known and top rated soloists while Ranald McCusker is developing his tenor career after success as a boy treble.

Edward Cowie is one of the most individual and notable voices in contemporary music – which he sees as both conscious and unconscious sensitivity to sound. Highly inspired by Nature and our world, he works with sound, color, order and disorder, shape, pattern and form which he sees a part of a grand unification of sensual input. As an acclaimed and successful visual artist, he creates drawings to visualize his subject matter before composing. His music is not however ‘filmic’ or directly impressionistic but draws from the essence of nature, wildlife and the seasons to create his unique soundworld. The Kreutzer Quartet is one of the most accomplished and creative ensembles in the UK and is acclaimed for its adventurous programming of both the music of our time and the great quartet heritage of the past. It has been the recipient of works from many of today’s pre-eminent composers, and has performed around Europe as well as at its ‘home base’ of Wilton’s Music Hall in London. The quartet has recorded a substantial number of albums for Metier as well as Chandos, Naxos, NMC, Toccata and several other labels.

“The four pieces on this release unfold with a powerful sense of inevitability and they all benefit from the Kreutzer Quartet's outstanding technical skill. Intricately constructed work of considerable refinement, rendered here with immense concentration and inventiveness… great sensitivity and expressive subtlety.”
– Paul Conway (Musical Opinion)

“Strong recommendation … simply outstanding.”
– Peter Dickinson (Musical Opinion)

Brian Ferneyhough is well established as one of the leading figures in the avant-garde ‘new complexity’ school. His works, fiercely complex and requiring virtuoso performers, are nevertheless among the most successful in the Métier new music catalog. This album contains all of Ferneyhough’s music for piano from 1965 to 2018 including the Two-Piano Sonata where Ian Pace is joined by Ben Smith. Ian Pace is renowned as a leading interpreter of new piano music and is a virtuoso of the highest order. Also a music philosopher, author and academic researcher, and head of department at City University London, his extremely impressive intellect informs his performances. This album includes a comprehensive and detailed essay on his approach to the music of Ferneyhough of interest to all musicologists. He has given world premieres of over 300 works and recorded 34 albums to date. Ben Smith is a London-based performer and composer specializing in contemporary music. Ben graduated from City, University of London in 2015, and is currently a Junior Fellow at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he previously studied with Laurence Crane, Rolf Hind, and James Weeks. He recently appeared on the new Métier recording of Alastair White’s opera ROBE (MSV 28609).

As in the previous Shonorities album, the Japanese aesthetic permeates all and creates a deep impression, but here, it is sometimes much more subtle - an impression of philosophy rather than overt musical style.The music of Athanasiadis is technically assured and varied within an overall aura of laid-back, gentle and delicate timbres. Greek composer Basil Athanasiadis lived and studied in Tokyo to become immersed in the culture. Since moving to England he has founded the unique musical ensemble Shonorities – a diverse group of performers and composers which blends various cultures with principal emphasis on Greece and Japan. The soloists are all highly accomplished and successful in their own right and contribute wonderfully to this second feast of magic from Athanasiadis.