LOUIS ANDRIESSEN (b.1939): Anaïs Nin (Cristina Zavalloni [voice]), De Staat (Synergy Vocals, Sound Intermedia).

Description: De Staat, from the early 1970s, epitomises the familiar image of Andriessen's music, with its persistent minimalist-process structures, confrontational , even aggressive, timbres, and political overtones. The much more recent monodrama Anaïs Nin retains distinctive traces of these identifying features, but there is a greater sense of flexibility of idiom, and of lyrical content in the ascendant over harmony and rhythm, in this new work. In part this is surely due to the composer's focus on presenting a portrait of a compelling, if controversial individual, rather than the more global, or frankly polemical, subjects of many previous works. Using extracts from Nin's diaries of her many erotic collisions, including the notoriously incestuous one with her father (the composer Joaquin Nin), the work is very accessible, passionate and often tender, with a finely evocative sense of the 1930s (the period of the events depicted) in the jazz-era instrumentation, and a sympathetic characterisation of the diarist and muse in the intimate and expressive vocal part, written for the singer in this performance. Texts included.  London Sinfonietta;  David Atherton.