Bird Concerto with Pianosong / Ricercar una melodia / Other Presences

Keith at Marbecks Classical writes: "As a long-term lover of Messiaen's birdsong pieces and the works of Jonathan Harvey I was immediately curious to hear what this work would sound like as it combines recorded birdsong triggered by samplers and transformed by various digital processes with a very Messiaen-influenced solo piano part and small orchestra. I was not disappointed: Harvey's music is glittery and radiant with a strong sense of joyous celebration but still fully committed to new sounds and new ways of combining them in surprising ways. There are not many radical contemporary composers whose music makes me smile but Harvey is one of them. Messiaen would have been touched I think."

Bird Concerto - Harvey's hommage to Messiaen - is a celebration of the kind of technical advances in electroacoustics which the creator of Oiseaux exotiques and the Catalogue d'oiseaux was never able to explore. Harvey started writing the piece when he was in California and says that 'indigo bunting, orchard oriole, golden crowned sparrow ... are some of the forty colourful Californian birds whose songs and cries sparked the ignition of this work'. The bird sounds have been innovatively transformed to create a mesmeric dialogue between nature and art. Harvey sets the piano soloist (the work was commissioned by pianist Joanna MacGregor) the challenge of combining piano playing and triggering a sampler/ synthesizer so that the live electronics can be realised in real-time performance. Other works on this disc are Other Presences, for trumpet and multi-loop effects, and two versions of the canonic Ricercare una melodia (1984) originally written for trumpet and quadraphonic tape-delay system, but here performed on oboe and cello, with live electronics from Sound Intermedia.