David Sawer

“…anyone listening to these discs will find many things to savour… It is, inevitably an eclectic mix, but, as in any well-planned song recital, the progressions and juxtapositions are continually stimulating,” BBC Music Magazine, May 2009 *****

“Unpredictable, audacious, exhilarating and continually fascinating the Songbook is an outstanding project” International Record Review

“The performances are uniformly superb...The more one listens, the more one gains from this set.” The Guardian, 17th April 2009 ***

“Composer Bayan Northcott gives an invaluable overview of British music in a programme essay. Recorded in London's Kings Place and beautifully sung and played by more than two dozen top performers.” The Observer, 12th April 2009

“NMC's 20th anniversary celebrations may or may not 'kick-start a new interest in the genre' (Bayan Northcott) but the initiative gives us a useful snapshot of British Music now, even if certain tendencies are better represented than others.
There are full texts and the imaginative design concept reflects the disparity of the idiomatic options available. Whether tonal, atonal or pseudo-tonal, some of these are found as if by chance and loosely worn, others carefully nurtured and obsessively worked. Britten remains in some ways the key figure in that his example persuades many contributors to stick with conventionally accompanied solo voice(s).
That said, his intuitive response to a text is less easily imitated than the externals of his style.
Martin Butler's Blake setting upholds the tradition in its best and purest form. Other examples might lead you to conclude that dislocated consonance, high voicing and a certain infuriating feyness constitute the defining features of British song.
There's room for the provocateurs as well. Luke Stoneham gets away with an electronic soundscape while Gerald Barry turns in a gleefully graceless recitation of Oscar Wilde. Jonathan Cole has Roderick Williams perform a sequence of phonemes while guesting on balloon.
Is a song a song at all if its text is merely a jumping-off point, a colour without a context? Morgan Hayes's Dickensian passages, ideally chosen for such a project, are quickly sidelined amid dizzying virtuosity. Chris Dench is still sufficiently hard–core to represent what was once a New Complexity. Few others appear capable of writing fast music even in short bursts, hence perhaps Colin Matthews's decision to break up the sequence with instrumental interludes. In the tradition of Stanford's pseudonymous Karel Drofnatzki he may also be behind the modest haiku setting with its allusions to NMC marketing strategy. Call me old–fashioned but my own favourite items are those in which both the original text and the passion of a composer's response are intelligible in the finished product. In Hugh Wood's George Herbert setting, careful workmanship does not preclude a Tippettian sense of exaltation.
There's a similar sense of engagement in Simon Holt's unaccompanied declamation (evoking a real-life incident in rural India) and Brian Elias's more subdued John Clare solo.
The way in which the items are juxtaposed can be crucial too; the cooler limpidity of Howard Skempton and Gavin Bryars is doubly welcome in context.
The performers range from good to excellent.
The recordings were almost all made in Hall One, Kings Place, an acclaimed venue where instrumental voices are unfailingly well projected.
Human ones, less comfortable with its zingy resonance, can become a little hectoring.
But then only a critic or a fool would listen to the entire collection at a sitting. Much better to study at leisure what should prove to be an important cultural document.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is flintily expressionistic music, needle-sharp in texture, superbly scored, and powerfully projected in this BBC performance by Martyn Brabbins, who conducted the premiere both of this and the opera from which it is derived.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 ****

Rolf Hind's response [is] comprehensively sensual: grimly enduring vicious whiplash chords while stupendously in control of the most glassy pianissimos. - The Musical Times, 1994

Sawer's writing is full of vivid ideas and crisp shapes; the whole piece has a machine-like inevitability about it that generates real physical excitement, and it is well caught in the BBC Symphony's performance under Andrew Davis. - The Guardian 1995

A wonderful snapshot of music being written in Britain now. Better still, these pieces have been written for us all to play. - The Observer 1999

“Committed playing throughout by the Schubert Ensemble… those who've already acquired the earlier volume need not hesitate: an ideal starting-point to experience the rewards of Chamber Music 2000” Gramophone Magazine