Classical

Gilchrist, Neary, Coleman
Chamber/vocal music by Pamela Harrison
Resonus RES10351 (downloads to 192kHz/24-bit resolution)

Born two years after Britten, in 1915, Pamela Harrison lived until 1990. Sample the magical web of strings to open her cycle of Herrick settings, The Kindling Of The Day, and the comparison should make sense. There are tints of VW’s modal harmony in her Octetto Pastorale but you might just as quickly hear neoclassical Stravinsky. Harrison’s own voice is not diminished in such company. A four-movement Cello Sonata is taut and turbulent, no less written within the character of the instruments than a quartet of deftly drawn sketches for winds and piano. The Lonely Landscape sets Emily Brontë, and instantly captures the wild and Gothic mood. Harrison really is a neglected voice. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

William Christie, et al
Works by Charpentier, Marais, Purcell, Senaillé, et al
Harmonia mundi HAF8905379 (downloads to 96kHz/16-bit res)

At almost 80, Christie has recorded this expansive survey of 17th- and 18th-century chamber music with colleagues he has mentored over the last decade, such as Justin Taylor and Thomas Dunford. In a booklet conversation, he views the album as a tribute to the health of the early-music scene, and education, in France. ‘I don’t feel any generation gap when I work with my companions’, he says, and given the rapid stylistic evolution in performing this music during his career, this is no small tribute both to his intellectual agility and their sensitivity. Thirteen composers, 36 tracks, most of them unfamiliar, arranged to flow like the ideal evening between friends. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

Pioro, Dennis, BBC PO/Brabbins, Gourlay, Schwarz
Coult: Three Pieces That Disappear, Pleasure Garden, Beautiful Caged Thing, After Lassus
NMC NMCD261 (downloads to 44.1kHz/16-bit resolution)

Tom Coult has some of the freshest ideas on the UK’s new-music scene. His BBC PO post as Composer in Association has yielded this consistently entrancing and intriguing album of recent work. Just try ‘Justus cor meum’, a smoky, sleazy, 2m tango that sends up a Lassus text and melody. Or the immaculate invention of the album’s title work, a 20m triptych which seems to turn the orchestra upside down and back to front. Best of all, I think, is Pleasure Garden, a violin concerto which playfully absorbs Renaissance-Italian and Japanese influences while sounding entirely of our time. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

Cappella Amsterdam, Orch of the 18th Century/Daniel Reuss
Works by Andriessen, Josquin, Preston, Rameau
Pentatone PTC5187389 (downloads to 44.1kHz/16-bit resolution)

Frans Brüggen and Louis Andriessen worked in the complementary fields of early and new music in 1960s Amsterdam. The centrepiece here is Andriessen’s swansong in memory of Brüggen, May (2021). Unclassifiably antique and modern, it fuses minimalism with 18th-century manners. The overall mood of the album is one of tender and radiant leave-taking, set by Josquin’s tribute to Ockeghem. Andriessen’s Sweet is a long melisma for solo recorder, a recording from Bruggen’s private archive. A Rameau dance, led in concert by Brüggen in 2012, completes this beautifully packaged elegy to both musicians. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%