If: Michael Nyman at 75

5 players plus Iestyn Davies, counter-tenor. 

Michael Nyman, one of Britain’s most famous and recognisable musical voices, turned 75 in 2019; Fretwork celebrated this event with a Signum recording with Iestyn Davies, one of today’s great voices. In this programme, Fretwork presents Nyman’s music juxtaposed with that of Henry Purcell. One of Nyman’s greatest influences, Purcell’s glorious ‘Music for a While’ provided the basis for Fretwork’s latest commissioned work by Nyman, ‘Music After a While’.

Editor’s Choice: The Nyman performances are exemplary – crisp and cleanly articulated from Fretwork and dispatched by Davies with a vacant, unrippled purity that is so essential to the music – Gramophone

Nyman: No Time in Eternity
Music after a While
Balancing the Books
If
Why 
The Self-Laudatory Hymn of Innanna
and her Omnipotence (1992)

Purcell: Fantazy No.7 in C minor
Fantazy No. 11 in G major
Fantazy No. 6 in F major
Music for a while
The Evening Hymn
Fantazy upon one note

Available on CD: