Harrison Birtwistle Chamber Music Lisa Batiashvili violin Adrian Brendel cello Till Fellner piano Amy Freston soprano Harrison Birtwistle baritone

Three Settings Of Lorine Niedecker
Always North Of Him
I Was The Solitary Plover
As I Shook Dust From My Father's Door

Trio for violin, violoncello and piano

Bogenstrich
Liebes-Lied 1
Lied ohne Worte
Variationen
Wie eine Fuge
Liebes-Lied 2

Nine Settings Of Lorine Niedecker
There's a Better Shine
My Friend Tree
Along The River
Hear Where Her Snowgrave Is
How the White Gulls
My Life
Paul
O Late Fall
Sleep's Dream

This album of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's chamber music and songs, mostly of recent vintage, is issued as the innovative Great British composer approaches his 80th birthday. It features an exceptional cast. Heard together and separately is the trio of Austrian pianist Till Fellner, Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili and English cellist Adrian Brendel. They are joined by London-born singers Amy Freston and Roderick Williams. The compositions include "Bogenstrich" written in 2006 as a short piece in tribute to Alfred Brendel and first played by his son Adrian together with Fellner. It was subsequently expanded into a cycle with the addition of settings of Rilke for baritone, cello and piano. The "Trio" is the newest piece, premiered in 2011, a 16-minute single movement work of elaborate patterning, gestures and responses, for piano, violin and cello. Settings of the writings of US Objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), scored for soprano and cello in 1998 and 2000, begin and close the album. As Bayan Northcott writes in the booklet, "These concentrated songs demand the utmost of their performers in precision, expression and timing. As in Webern's settings, the few words and notes on the page can seem to imply whole worlds of thought and feeling". This highly-concentrated chamber-scale expressivity is felt throughout the entire album, recorded at Munich's famed Herkulessaal, and produced by Manfred Eicher.