GERALD BARRY (b.1952): 1998 for Violin and Piano, All day at home busy with my own affairs for Piano, Midday for Violin and Piano, Le Vieux Sourd for Piano, Baroness von Ritkart for Violin and Piano, In the Asylum for Piano Trio, Ø for Piano Quartet (w/Rose Redgrave [viola], Triorchic Blues for Piano Trio (all but In the Asylum are First Recordings).

Description: Many of Barry’s compositions exist in multiple versions; these are the world première recordings of the versions for subdivisions of the piano quartet of these pieces. 1998 is described as "An harmonic autobiography". It consists of twenty minutes of cryptic, detached fragments, tonal, brusque and mostly aggressive. Each one bears a very specific expression marking. All day at home busy with my own affairs features the composer making an Hitchcockian cameo. It meanders aimlessly and repetitively, with brief interruptions; the musical equivalent of watching a man at his desk presumably working on something but without being in a position to see what it is. Midday is even more static, resembling the meaningless ticking of a clock on a somnolent, lazy afternoon. Nothing happens for eight minutes except a couple of birds calling outside the window. Le Vieux Sourd (The Old Deaf One) was Debussy's nickname for Beethoven. The piece is a raucously jazzy arrangement, just about recognisable as "Auld Lang Syne", of which Beethoven made an arrangement that sounds nothing like this. Baroness von Ritkart, also for orchestra, lasting all of two minutes, presents the same melancholy fragments in three arrangements; Clever, noble, but not talented, Talented, noble, but not clever, and Talented, clever, but not noble. The piano trio In the Asylum is hallucinatory and suitably disturbed, obsessive, compulsive, and detached. Ø (i.e. zero) was inspired by Mark Rothko, and is accordingly enigmatic and subtle almost to the point of featurelessness. Triorchic Blues is rudely energetic, and is described as a "testicular whirlwind". Alright, then. Fidelio Trio.