James Dillon - Sgothan
Brian Ferneyhough - Cassandra's Dream Song
Salvatore Sciarrino - 3 Pieces from L'opera per flauto

Conceived as an act to preserve the purity and integrity of the sound documents (a proposition widely disregarded these days) it was recorded in a five hour session without a break in an almost Dogme95-like stance.  Alongside, is the intention of capturing all of the personal idiosyncrasies, inflections and internal references, conscious or otherwise, that are omnipresent in live performance - there has been no editing of the the material, neither for page turns or 'mistakes', and all are complete 'takes'. As a result, there is a migration of the sound which is obvious in the Dillon when I move to the next page-a small but charming addition to the gradual winding-down of 'Sgothan'.

James Dillon's music is embedded in syntax and turbulence. In 'Sgothan', this manifests itself as 24 interwoven miniatures, in various states of equilibrium and volatility, colliding and diffracting from each other with varying degrees of temporal and sonic flux, whilst retaining a disquieting naivete.

Brian Ferneyhough's labyrinthine systems reveal a work of surprising fragility and hyper-expression in 'Cassandra's Dream Song', his first essay for flute and one of the iconoclasts of its time. 

'Come vengono prodotti gli incantesimi?' 'Canzona di ringraziamento' and 'Lettera degli antipodi portata dal vento' surround us in the world of whispers and shadows which Salvatore Sciarrino inhabits.  With unassuming ascendancy, the music envelopes us and erodes our concepts of borders and limitations with incantations, songs of thanks and letters to the antipodes, all of which are steeped in semiotics, the meanings and signs of which are unearthed in this recording.

Richard Craig (www.richardcraig.net) 

Recorded by: Douglas Whates, Natural Studio (http://www.naturalstudio.co.uk/records/) at Wellington Church, Glasgow, Scotland on the 15th of August, 2005. 

Dogme95 ("The Vow of Chastity", Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg)