Commissions

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Among the highlights are Mark-Anthony Turnage's unsettling Black Milk (a setting of Paul Celan's Todesfuge, where jazz singer Ian Shaw's grainy vocals are appropriately curdling) and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s... — Katherine Cooper, Presto Music, March 2022 More…

Release Date: 11th Mar 2022
Catalogue No: PSA1008
Label: NMC
Length: 81 minutes

Presto Editor's Choice

March 2022

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Casken: Winter Reels

Work length20:24

$4.00

$5.20

$7.00

Psappha
Clark Rundell

I. A Warming Dance

Track length6:13

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

II. A Cold Song

Track length6:03

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. A Spirited Gathering

Track length8:08

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Cruttwell-Reade: Patdeep Studies

Work length14:26

$5.00

$6.50

$8.75

Jasdeep Singh Degun
Psappha

I. A Study in the Elements of Ālāp (The Unveiling of the Rāg Pathway)

Track length3:17

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

II. A Study in the Elements of Jor

Track length3:45

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. A Study in the Elements of Gat Composition

Track length3:12

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IV. A Free Study in Tāns

Track length1:47

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

V. A Study in the Elements of Ālāp (The Shadowing of the Rāg Pathway)

Track length2:25

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Harrold: Dark Dance

Work length8:16

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Psappha
Jamie Phillips

Turnage: Black Milk (Live)

Work length10:04

$3.00

$3.85

$3.50

Ian Shaw
Psappha
Jamie Phillips

Coult, T: Two Games and a Nocturne

Work length11:18

$3.00

$3.90

$5.25

Psappha
Jamie Phillips

No. 1, Game I. Fidgety, Skittish

Track length2:43

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

No. 2, Game II. Meccanico ma accelerando

Track length4:50

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

No. 3, Nocturne. Drifting, Malleable

Track length3:45

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Stevenson, G: Trees Made of Air

Work length8:28

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Psappha
Clark Rundell

Firsova, A: Songs of the World, Op. 44

Work length8:58

$3.00

$3.90

$5.25

Daisy Brown
Psappha
Stephen Barlow

No. 1, Secret of the World

Track length3:51

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

No. 2, Song of the World

Track length1:18

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

No. 3, What Is the World?

Track length3:49

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

About
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About

Psappha, the North West’s only stand-alone professional contemporary classical music ensemble, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a new album of world-premiere recordings. Commissions features six works commissioned and first performed by Psappha over the last 12 years – and collectively, they show the breadth of the group’s repertoire, the scope of its ambition and the esteem in which it is held by just six of the hundreds of composers with whom it has worked since it was founded in 1991.

Mark-Anthony Turnage, Psappha’s Patron since 2018, contributes a major new work written for jazz singer Ian Shaw and a 16-strong ensemble – Black Milk, a potent and powerful setting of Paul Celan’s post-war poem ‘Todesfuge’ (‘Death Fugue’). John Casken, a longtime associate, is represented by Winter Reels, a three-movement work inspired by landscapes in winter and written for Psappha’s core group of six musicians (violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano and percussion).

Commissions also features world-premiere recordings by four of the UK’s brightest young talents. Tom Coult, the BBC Philharmonic’s Composer in Association, contributes Two Games and a Nocturne – first playful, then sombre.

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s Patdeep Studies, written for sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun, is a fascinating exploration of the traditional Hindustānī rāg Patdeep. Tom Harrold describes his exhilarating Dark Dance as a ‘perverse viola concertino’, written for violist Heather Wallington. And George Stevenson takes his cues for the restless Trees Made of Air from a quote by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. Purchasers also get access to a free download of a seventh Psappha commission: Songs of the World, a cycle by Alissa Firsova that sets words by Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Reviews

March 2022

Among the highlights are Mark-Anthony Turnage's unsettling Black Milk (a setting of Paul Celan's Todesfuge, where jazz singer Ian Shaw's grainy vocals are appropriately curdling) and Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s mesmerising, virtuosic sitar concerto Patdeep Studies. The pearl, though, is Alissa Firsova's Songs of the World, shot through with whispers of Korngold and Berg, and sung with beguiling, Barbara Hannigan-ish sensuality by soprano Daisy Brown

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