The Path Above the Dunes: Chamber Music by Nicola LeFanu
Gemini
MEX77112
The British composer Nicola LeFanu (b.1947) is a key figure in musical life, through her teaching (she was professor of music at York University) as well as through her own substantial catalogue of works. The Path Above the Dunes (Métier) – chamber music by LeFanu performed by Gemini – consists of four works written across nearly half a century. The Same Day Dawns (1974) sets short, sensuous texts for soprano (Clara Barbier Serrano), flute/alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, violin and cello. Sextet – a wild garden – fásach (1996), using the same instruments, with piano, conjures wild places in Ireland. The single-movement Piano Trio (2003) moves from fast and furious to diffuse and mysterious. The Moth-Ghost (2020), a dramatic scena on the death of Achilles, draws on her experience as a composer of several operas. Superbly played and sung, this is music to celebrate and explore.
—Fiona Maddocks, The Observer (2024)
Métier continues its welcome coverage of Nicola LeFanu with this volume of four works spanning some 46 years of her creativity, all heard in performances from one of the UK’s most prominent contemporary music groups, which will celebrate its half-century this year.
Seasoned readers may have encountered LeFanu’s music via a recording of The Same Day Dawns (1974) by Jane Manning with the Nash Ensemble (Chandos 4/81), never reissued but to which this new account is a worthy successor. Soprano Clara Barbier Serrano is a searching exponent of these 17 ‘Fragments from a Book of Songs’, the oriental texts arranged as a spiralular sequence whose textual repetition runs parallel to its overall evolution – with a tensile instrumental then ethereal vocalise (tracks 9 and 10) its formal and emotional apex. Strategic repetition is also evident in The Moth-Ghost (2020) to a specially written poem by James Harpur, but its expression feels more visceral as befits the mourning of an immortal mother for her heroic if ultimately human son in music of sustained plangency.
The instrumental pieces seem, if anything, even more engrossing. Inspired by wild places off the Connemara coast, the Sextet (1996) unfolds as a series of solos and sub-groupings made possible by the ensemble’s timbral contrasts and motivic clarity. This is no less apparent in the Piano Trio (2003), but here the medium’s closeness to earlier precedent likely informs its expressive rhetoric and three-part continuity, whose moving from agitation via confrontation to stability makes for an intriguing vantage upon the ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’ archetype.
Gemini’s playing is admirable individually and collectively throughout, abetted by sound of unsparing focus, with detailed notes by the composer and Ian Mitchell. Those who acquired NMC’s release of LeFanu’s orchestral works (11/20) should make this their next port of call.
—Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone (April 2024)
Gemini
MEX77112
The British composer Nicola LeFanu (b.1947) is a key figure in musical life, through her teaching (she was professor of music at York University) as well as through her own substantial catalogue of works. The Path Above the Dunes (Métier) – chamber music by LeFanu performed by Gemini – consists of four works written across nearly half a century. The Same Day Dawns (1974) sets short, sensuous texts for soprano (Clara Barbier Serrano), flute/alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, violin and cello. Sextet – a wild garden – fásach (1996), using the same instruments, with piano, conjures wild places in Ireland. The single-movement Piano Trio (2003) moves from fast and furious to diffuse and mysterious. The Moth-Ghost (2020), a dramatic scena on the death of Achilles, draws on her experience as a composer of several operas. Superbly played and sung, this is music to celebrate and explore.
—Fiona Maddocks, The Observer (2024)
Métier continues its welcome coverage of Nicola LeFanu with this volume of four works spanning some 46 years of her creativity, all heard in performances from one of the UK’s most prominent contemporary music groups, which will celebrate its half-century this year.
Seasoned readers may have encountered LeFanu’s music via a recording of The Same Day Dawns (1974) by Jane Manning with the Nash Ensemble (Chandos 4/81), never reissued but to which this new account is a worthy successor. Soprano Clara Barbier Serrano is a searching exponent of these 17 ‘Fragments from a Book of Songs’, the oriental texts arranged as a spiralular sequence whose textual repetition runs parallel to its overall evolution – with a tensile instrumental then ethereal vocalise (tracks 9 and 10) its formal and emotional apex. Strategic repetition is also evident in The Moth-Ghost (2020) to a specially written poem by James Harpur, but its expression feels more visceral as befits the mourning of an immortal mother for her heroic if ultimately human son in music of sustained plangency.
The instrumental pieces seem, if anything, even more engrossing. Inspired by wild places off the Connemara coast, the Sextet (1996) unfolds as a series of solos and sub-groupings made possible by the ensemble’s timbral contrasts and motivic clarity. This is no less apparent in the Piano Trio (2003), but here the medium’s closeness to earlier precedent likely informs its expressive rhetoric and three-part continuity, whose moving from agitation via confrontation to stability makes for an intriguing vantage upon the ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’ archetype.
Gemini’s playing is admirable individually and collectively throughout, abetted by sound of unsparing focus, with detailed notes by the composer and Ian Mitchell. Those who acquired NMC’s release of LeFanu’s orchestral works (11/20) should make this their next port of call.
—Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone (April 2024)
Gemini Quartet for clarinet, piano, violin, cello
Nicola LeFanu at 75: Late Music Festival with Gemini
Unitarian Chapel, York, 3 December 2023
Nicola LeFanu’s 75th birthday earlier this year was celebrated in fine style by one of our most distinguished and long-lived groups, Gemini, itself only a year short of its half-century.
Gemini is a flexible ensemble led from the clarinet by Ian Mitchell. Here he was joined by a piano trio for the premiere of LeFanu’s appropriately titled Gemini Quartet, newly commissioned and written only this summer. As an opener it was designed to reflect how we welcome others, in a dozen or so brief “bagatelles” (her word), some of only a few seconds. It charms with surprises, moving seamlessly between comfort and anguish, impressionism and rhythm, sometimes noisy, more often gentle, using the instruments in a variety of different groupings. Gemini delivered it with loving care. I could only have wished its 13 minutes had lasted longer.
At the end of the evening, more than two hours later, we heard her Piano Trio of 2003. Its single movement is rhapsodic, all its material developed from high harmonics and tremolos, which are soon amplified by a piano solo. It charts a fascinating course between nerviness and relaxation, the two moods changing between strings and piano, as dialogue influences their responses to one another. As always with LeFanu, her orchestration is imaginative. It eventually reaches a harmonious conclusion, with trills in the piano as the strings disappear into the ether. Gemini interacted intuitively throughout.
—Martin Dreyer (December 2023)
On 3 December, Gemini gave a richly programmed concert in the series to mark the 75th birthday of their honorary president, Nicola LeFanu. […] The evening’s music making began with the premiere of Nicola LeFanu’s Gemini Quartet, for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2022). This skilfully crafted, ten-minute work took the form of a collection of tiny, contrasting bagatelles or short character pieces, played without a break. The full ensemble got the work underway in a cheerfully dauntless spirit, exploring a descending figure that sounded like a peal of bells. Gradually, as the instruments paired off to form various musical partnerships, including a quicksilver duet for clarinet and piano and an expressive, hushed passage for cello and piano, darker threads in the material began to emerge. Yet, as the narrative progressed, the music mellowed and became more lyrical and fluent, while the open-ended conclusion was radiantly optimistic. The little vignettes that made up the material appeared to be unrelated in the opening stages of the work, yet, in the more expansive sections of the score’s second half, these fragments gradually started to coalesce and cohere. The Gemini Quartet gave the performers a chance to demonstrate their musicianship, both individually and within different larger groups, and its compact, tightly-knit quality allowed the wide-ranging and disparate ideas to hang together convincingly. The players’ longstanding relationship with Nicola LeFanu was evident in their warmly authoritative account of her new piece, written especially for them and dedicated to the ensemble’s director and clarinettist, Ian Mitchell.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion (April 2023)
Nicola LeFanu at 75: Late Music Festival with Gemini
Unitarian Chapel, York, 3 December 2023
Nicola LeFanu’s 75th birthday earlier this year was celebrated in fine style by one of our most distinguished and long-lived groups, Gemini, itself only a year short of its half-century.
Gemini is a flexible ensemble led from the clarinet by Ian Mitchell. Here he was joined by a piano trio for the premiere of LeFanu’s appropriately titled Gemini Quartet, newly commissioned and written only this summer. As an opener it was designed to reflect how we welcome others, in a dozen or so brief “bagatelles” (her word), some of only a few seconds. It charms with surprises, moving seamlessly between comfort and anguish, impressionism and rhythm, sometimes noisy, more often gentle, using the instruments in a variety of different groupings. Gemini delivered it with loving care. I could only have wished its 13 minutes had lasted longer.
At the end of the evening, more than two hours later, we heard her Piano Trio of 2003. Its single movement is rhapsodic, all its material developed from high harmonics and tremolos, which are soon amplified by a piano solo. It charts a fascinating course between nerviness and relaxation, the two moods changing between strings and piano, as dialogue influences their responses to one another. As always with LeFanu, her orchestration is imaginative. It eventually reaches a harmonious conclusion, with trills in the piano as the strings disappear into the ether. Gemini interacted intuitively throughout.
—Martin Dreyer (December 2023)
On 3 December, Gemini gave a richly programmed concert in the series to mark the 75th birthday of their honorary president, Nicola LeFanu. […] The evening’s music making began with the premiere of Nicola LeFanu’s Gemini Quartet, for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2022). This skilfully crafted, ten-minute work took the form of a collection of tiny, contrasting bagatelles or short character pieces, played without a break. The full ensemble got the work underway in a cheerfully dauntless spirit, exploring a descending figure that sounded like a peal of bells. Gradually, as the instruments paired off to form various musical partnerships, including a quicksilver duet for clarinet and piano and an expressive, hushed passage for cello and piano, darker threads in the material began to emerge. Yet, as the narrative progressed, the music mellowed and became more lyrical and fluent, while the open-ended conclusion was radiantly optimistic. The little vignettes that made up the material appeared to be unrelated in the opening stages of the work, yet, in the more expansive sections of the score’s second half, these fragments gradually started to coalesce and cohere. The Gemini Quartet gave the performers a chance to demonstrate their musicianship, both individually and within different larger groups, and its compact, tightly-knit quality allowed the wide-ranging and disparate ideas to hang together convincingly. The players’ longstanding relationship with Nicola LeFanu was evident in their warmly authoritative account of her new piece, written especially for them and dedicated to the ensemble’s director and clarinettist, Ian Mitchell.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion (April 2023)
After Farrera for horn, violin and cello
At the World’s Edge Festival, New Zealand
The Cloudy Bay Shed, Cromwell, 12 October 2023
[Ben] Goldscheider brought to AWE his recently commissioned trio from senior British composer Nicola LeFanu, After Farrera, named for a village high in the Catalan Pyrenees where the composer had been in retreat. Played by violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, UK cellist Alice Neary and Goldscheider on horn, After Farrera is beautifully crafted with a wide expressive and timbral range, setting up a dialogue between horn and strings as two musical characters, solitary and populous.
—Elizabeth Kerr, Five Lines (October 2023)
Leicester International Music Festival
September 2023
Anna-Lisa Bezrodny, Ben Goldscheider and Ashok Klouda gave the second performance of Nicola LeFanu’s ‘After Ferrera’, for violin, horn and cello, the work’s premiere having taken place nine days earlier at the 2023 Lammermuir Festival. Inspired by a composing retreat situated in the Spanish village of the title, this colourful fantasia conjured up the bustle of a busy tourist attraction in the confident, florid lines of the main sections, while capturing something of the area’s vast, spacious landscapes in the quieter, more sparsely scored passages. The players were sensitive to the music’s ever-shifting moods, especially in the gently soothing, berceuse-like final section. Subtly scored, with effective use of natural harmonics and microtones, ‘After Ferrara’ offered ear-catching expressive techniques within the context of a compelling, overarching musical argument. This trio is a welcome, highly individual addition to the repertoire.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion
At the World’s Edge Festival, New Zealand
The Cloudy Bay Shed, Cromwell, 12 October 2023
[Ben] Goldscheider brought to AWE his recently commissioned trio from senior British composer Nicola LeFanu, After Farrera, named for a village high in the Catalan Pyrenees where the composer had been in retreat. Played by violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, UK cellist Alice Neary and Goldscheider on horn, After Farrera is beautifully crafted with a wide expressive and timbral range, setting up a dialogue between horn and strings as two musical characters, solitary and populous.
—Elizabeth Kerr, Five Lines (October 2023)
Leicester International Music Festival
September 2023
Anna-Lisa Bezrodny, Ben Goldscheider and Ashok Klouda gave the second performance of Nicola LeFanu’s ‘After Ferrera’, for violin, horn and cello, the work’s premiere having taken place nine days earlier at the 2023 Lammermuir Festival. Inspired by a composing retreat situated in the Spanish village of the title, this colourful fantasia conjured up the bustle of a busy tourist attraction in the confident, florid lines of the main sections, while capturing something of the area’s vast, spacious landscapes in the quieter, more sparsely scored passages. The players were sensitive to the music’s ever-shifting moods, especially in the gently soothing, berceuse-like final section. Subtly scored, with effective use of natural harmonics and microtones, ‘After Ferrara’ offered ear-catching expressive techniques within the context of a compelling, overarching musical argument. This trio is a welcome, highly individual addition to the repertoire.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion
Quintet for Strings for two violins, viola and two cellos
The British Music Society of York
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, 1 October 2021
The British Music Society of York marked their 100th anniversary by commissioning a two-cello string quintet from Nicola LeFanu, which was premiered by the Sacconi Quartet and cellist Tim Lowe in the University of York’s Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on 1 October 2021.
LeFanu’s Quintet took the form of a single movement that juxtaposed extrovert and reflective episodes. These contrasting elements cast fresh light upon each other as the piece unfolded. In the quiet and tranquil opening section, the two cellos introduced a three-note figure that recalled the profoundly poised principal theme of the slow movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C major. Quicker and more ebulliently rhythmic material recurred throughout the piece. Often laced by microtones, the quieter episodes drew the audience in to the music. At the heart of the work was a sonorous section, devotional in character, perhaps a nod to the questing chorale that lies at the centre of the Schubert Quintet’s scherzo.
Cogently argued and richly textured, Nicola LeFanu’s Quintet is a valuable addition to the repertoire, which reflects the celebratory nature of the original commission, but also finds time for introspection. Like the Schubert work to which it so deftly pays tribute, it is a piece of light and shade, spirit and repose. LeFanu exploits the second cello to telling effect, often setting the two cellists against the rest of the ensemble, so that the eloquent opening dialogue for the two instruments seems to resonate throughout the score. In this very fine first performance, the players conveyed with clarity the score’s overarching structure, while also savouring its many effective gestures and dialogues.
[…]
This special concert was made memorable in equal measure by a refreshingly unhackneyed view of a well-loved staple of the repertoire and a rewarding new work, superbly presented, for the same forces.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion
Schubert’s incomparable String Quintet in C was preceded by the world premiere of an engaging new BMS commission for the same forces from Nicola LeFanu, one of the society’s two vice-presidents. Titled simply Quintet and lasting some 20 minutes, it lives up to the composer’s typically lucid programme-note as a combination of celebration and reflection, which are mirrored in two contrasting themes. The faster of these provides a rondo motif while the slower inspires its diversions.
The device works excellently. The two cellos generally operate as a pensive pair, while the higher strings interrupt, sometimes intensely, always excitedly, often preferring a catchy iambic rhythm when not adding twinkling filigrees. But all of the instruments have something individual to say. At the centre of the work is a solemn chorale, after which the second cello has a broad, yearning passage – which Tim Lowe attacked with relish. This is the signal for mounting urgency, which is capped by a return to the opening cello duet at the close. Did I detect here the semitone with which Schubert so determinedly ends his quintet?
The Sacconi and Lowe brought fervent application to their task, clearly enjoying its challenge. The music makes real sense on a first hearing, but would also repay deeper listening. It certainly commends itself as a partner to the Schubert.
—Martin Dreyer (2021)
The British Music Society of York
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, 1 October 2021
The British Music Society of York marked their 100th anniversary by commissioning a two-cello string quintet from Nicola LeFanu, which was premiered by the Sacconi Quartet and cellist Tim Lowe in the University of York’s Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on 1 October 2021.
LeFanu’s Quintet took the form of a single movement that juxtaposed extrovert and reflective episodes. These contrasting elements cast fresh light upon each other as the piece unfolded. In the quiet and tranquil opening section, the two cellos introduced a three-note figure that recalled the profoundly poised principal theme of the slow movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C major. Quicker and more ebulliently rhythmic material recurred throughout the piece. Often laced by microtones, the quieter episodes drew the audience in to the music. At the heart of the work was a sonorous section, devotional in character, perhaps a nod to the questing chorale that lies at the centre of the Schubert Quintet’s scherzo.
Cogently argued and richly textured, Nicola LeFanu’s Quintet is a valuable addition to the repertoire, which reflects the celebratory nature of the original commission, but also finds time for introspection. Like the Schubert work to which it so deftly pays tribute, it is a piece of light and shade, spirit and repose. LeFanu exploits the second cello to telling effect, often setting the two cellists against the rest of the ensemble, so that the eloquent opening dialogue for the two instruments seems to resonate throughout the score. In this very fine first performance, the players conveyed with clarity the score’s overarching structure, while also savouring its many effective gestures and dialogues.
[…]
This special concert was made memorable in equal measure by a refreshingly unhackneyed view of a well-loved staple of the repertoire and a rewarding new work, superbly presented, for the same forces.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion
Schubert’s incomparable String Quintet in C was preceded by the world premiere of an engaging new BMS commission for the same forces from Nicola LeFanu, one of the society’s two vice-presidents. Titled simply Quintet and lasting some 20 minutes, it lives up to the composer’s typically lucid programme-note as a combination of celebration and reflection, which are mirrored in two contrasting themes. The faster of these provides a rondo motif while the slower inspires its diversions.
The device works excellently. The two cellos generally operate as a pensive pair, while the higher strings interrupt, sometimes intensely, always excitedly, often preferring a catchy iambic rhythm when not adding twinkling filigrees. But all of the instruments have something individual to say. At the centre of the work is a solemn chorale, after which the second cello has a broad, yearning passage – which Tim Lowe attacked with relish. This is the signal for mounting urgency, which is capped by a return to the opening cello duet at the close. Did I detect here the semitone with which Schubert so determinedly ends his quintet?
The Sacconi and Lowe brought fervent application to their task, clearly enjoying its challenge. The music makes real sense on a first hearing, but would also repay deeper listening. It certainly commends itself as a partner to the Schubert.
—Martin Dreyer (2021)
The Crimson Bird for soprano and orchestra (2016)
soaring new work is timeless and timely
Rachel Nicholls delivered a gleaming performance in Nicola LeFanu’s fiery new concertante. Nicola LeFanu’s new work The Crimson Bird, an RPS Elgar bursary commission feels at once timeless and urgently up to date. A mother signs of feeding her baby, and of a siege. So far, so Trojan. But John Fuller’s text turns us away from mythical times and towards the present. A house sliced open, children dead in the dust, mortars exploding in the citadel; we could be in Aleppo. LeFanu’s 25-minute score, for soprano and full orchestra, knits all of this together. A lilting clarinet figure at the start, as the baby sucks in his sleep, becomes the sound of starving dogs whimpering outside the gates – and finally the keening of the mother, whose now-adult child has been killed without her knowing whether he is murderer or hero. It was written for Rachel Nicholls, who gave a gleaming, soaring performance, yet the orchestral heft was such that even a voice as powerful as hers was sometimes obscured. But LeFanu, with her long experience of writing opera, ensured the most shocking words were heard: the listener is brought up short as the orchestral turmoil suddenly cuts out and the soprano resorts to speech.
—Erica Jeal, The Guardian (18 February 2017)
LeFanu has created a concertante work which certainly does justice in orchestral terms to the uncompromising directness in Fuller's dramatic narrative. The four sections of the work, entitled Vigil, Terror, Lament and Prayer in Fuller's original poem, displayed LeFanu's creative talent for orchestral colour, displayed in the translucent textures of strings, wind and celesta which gently swirled around Nicholls' solo part in the opening stanza, "When the air is cool as silk", the eerie moans heard after the lines "Where the dying are darkened and whimpering/ Like dogs who have been shut out of their lives" and the explosive violence of the second and third sections.
—Online ‘Bachtrack’ blog (18 February 2017)
soaring new work is timeless and timely
Rachel Nicholls delivered a gleaming performance in Nicola LeFanu’s fiery new concertante. Nicola LeFanu’s new work The Crimson Bird, an RPS Elgar bursary commission feels at once timeless and urgently up to date. A mother signs of feeding her baby, and of a siege. So far, so Trojan. But John Fuller’s text turns us away from mythical times and towards the present. A house sliced open, children dead in the dust, mortars exploding in the citadel; we could be in Aleppo. LeFanu’s 25-minute score, for soprano and full orchestra, knits all of this together. A lilting clarinet figure at the start, as the baby sucks in his sleep, becomes the sound of starving dogs whimpering outside the gates – and finally the keening of the mother, whose now-adult child has been killed without her knowing whether he is murderer or hero. It was written for Rachel Nicholls, who gave a gleaming, soaring performance, yet the orchestral heft was such that even a voice as powerful as hers was sometimes obscured. But LeFanu, with her long experience of writing opera, ensured the most shocking words were heard: the listener is brought up short as the orchestral turmoil suddenly cuts out and the soprano resorts to speech.
—Erica Jeal, The Guardian (18 February 2017)
LeFanu has created a concertante work which certainly does justice in orchestral terms to the uncompromising directness in Fuller's dramatic narrative. The four sections of the work, entitled Vigil, Terror, Lament and Prayer in Fuller's original poem, displayed LeFanu's creative talent for orchestral colour, displayed in the translucent textures of strings, wind and celesta which gently swirled around Nicholls' solo part in the opening stanza, "When the air is cool as silk", the eerie moans heard after the lines "Where the dying are darkened and whimpering/ Like dogs who have been shut out of their lives" and the explosive violence of the second and third sections.
—Online ‘Bachtrack’ blog (18 February 2017)
The Crimson Bird & Other Orchestral Works
NMCCD255
It’s fascinating to hear the 1973 world premiere of The Hidden Landscape, which prefigures some of George Benjamin’s recent work in terms of sonorities – but the main event here is the title-work, an intensely dramatic 25-minute monologue for soprano and orchestra setting a poem by John Fuller and portraying a desperate mother trapped in a city under siege; it’s powerfully sung (and with immaculate diction) by Nicholls, a celebrated Wagnerian who rides the thick orchestration with ease
—Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical (September 2020)
That LeFanu possesses an ear for finesse is evident from The Hidden Landscape (1973), with its oblique yet purposeful trajectory from the ominous, even confrontational to a gauntly imposing climax and expectant close. Even greater subtlety is found in Columbia Falls...If both these pieces exude a certain impersonal quality, the plangent immediacy of Threnody (2014) is never in doubt. Nor is that of the Crimson Bird.
—Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone (November 2020)
The results are impressive and confident, a testament both to Lefanu's skill at writing for large forces and the players' understanding of her style. ★★★★
—Planet Hugill (2020)
These four works are given convincing and committed performances which do justice to this underrated composer and afford the listener a wonderful opportunity to hear the colour and style of her orchestral music. The sound is very good and the booklet notes include a detailed introduction by Kate Romano and incisive program notes by LeFanu herself on each of the four pieces recorded here. I hope that this is just the first of a series of discs dedicated to exploring her music.
—Stuart Sillitoe, MusicWeb-International.com (15 January 2021)
... Nicola LeFanu's music inspires through its integrity and inner strength and all four works on this important release benefit from the vibrancy and fastidiousness of her orchestral writing. *****
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion Quarterly (October–December 2020)
NMCCD255
It’s fascinating to hear the 1973 world premiere of The Hidden Landscape, which prefigures some of George Benjamin’s recent work in terms of sonorities – but the main event here is the title-work, an intensely dramatic 25-minute monologue for soprano and orchestra setting a poem by John Fuller and portraying a desperate mother trapped in a city under siege; it’s powerfully sung (and with immaculate diction) by Nicholls, a celebrated Wagnerian who rides the thick orchestration with ease
—Katherine Cooper, Presto Classical (September 2020)
That LeFanu possesses an ear for finesse is evident from The Hidden Landscape (1973), with its oblique yet purposeful trajectory from the ominous, even confrontational to a gauntly imposing climax and expectant close. Even greater subtlety is found in Columbia Falls...If both these pieces exude a certain impersonal quality, the plangent immediacy of Threnody (2014) is never in doubt. Nor is that of the Crimson Bird.
—Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone (November 2020)
The results are impressive and confident, a testament both to Lefanu's skill at writing for large forces and the players' understanding of her style. ★★★★
—Planet Hugill (2020)
These four works are given convincing and committed performances which do justice to this underrated composer and afford the listener a wonderful opportunity to hear the colour and style of her orchestral music. The sound is very good and the booklet notes include a detailed introduction by Kate Romano and incisive program notes by LeFanu herself on each of the four pieces recorded here. I hope that this is just the first of a series of discs dedicated to exploring her music.
—Stuart Sillitoe, MusicWeb-International.com (15 January 2021)
... Nicola LeFanu's music inspires through its integrity and inner strength and all four works on this important release benefit from the vibrancy and fastidiousness of her orchestral writing. *****
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion Quarterly (October–December 2020)
MSV 28565
British composer Nicola LeFanu is renowned for works of imaginative beauty, often drawing on diverse extra-musical prompts (previous pieces explore the Black Death, Edo Japan and the Arizona desert). LeFanu’s Trio 2: Song for Peter (1983) for soprano, clarinet and piano is by turns fierce and meditative, pondering ideas of mortality through texts by Emily Dickinson, Checkhov, Ted Hughes and Sara Teasdale, and performed here with particular poise and fire by soprano Sarah Leonard. Invisible Places (1986) for string quartet and clarinet takes Italo Calvino’s beguiling Invisible Cities as its starting point, capturing the book’s seamless shifts between micro- and macrocosm in the score’s inventive textural contrasts.
—Kate Wakeling BBC Music Magazine (March 2017)
British composer Nicola LeFanu is renowned for works of imaginative beauty, often drawing on diverse extra-musical prompts (previous pieces explore the Black Death, Edo Japan and the Arizona desert). LeFanu’s Trio 2: Song for Peter (1983) for soprano, clarinet and piano is by turns fierce and meditative, pondering ideas of mortality through texts by Emily Dickinson, Checkhov, Ted Hughes and Sara Teasdale, and performed here with particular poise and fire by soprano Sarah Leonard. Invisible Places (1986) for string quartet and clarinet takes Italo Calvino’s beguiling Invisible Cities as its starting point, capturing the book’s seamless shifts between micro- and macrocosm in the score’s inventive textural contrasts.
—Kate Wakeling BBC Music Magazine (March 2017)
Piano Trio
A superbly constructed single-movement span, Nicola LeFanu’s Piano Trio of 2003 develops logically and grippingly the distinctive ideas presented in the opening bars. It proved the young performers’ ability to tackle pure, non-programmatic music and demonstrated their natural feeling for formal proportion and balance. A substantial statement balancing refinement and toughness, LeFanu’s Piano Trio made a weighty and satisfying centrepiece to the programme.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion (Autumn 2015)
A superbly constructed single-movement span, Nicola LeFanu’s Piano Trio of 2003 develops logically and grippingly the distinctive ideas presented in the opening bars. It proved the young performers’ ability to tackle pure, non-programmatic music and demonstrated their natural feeling for formal proportion and balance. A substantial statement balancing refinement and toughness, LeFanu’s Piano Trio made a weighty and satisfying centrepiece to the programme.
—Paul Conway, Musical Opinion (Autumn 2015)
Tokaido Road, a Journey after Hiroshige chamber opera (2014)
Inspired by the Japanese artist Hiroshige’s woodblock print series 53 Stations of the Tokaido, LeFanu and her librettist Nancy Gaffield have created an existential journey in speech, song, mime and dance with Hiroshige’s pictures projected. What with unhappy love, treacherous rivers and wintry scenes, it’s rather like an oriental Winterreise. We’re left with Hiroshige in old age, singing his own epitaph, and the dying murmurs of the sho (Japanese mouth organ) and flickerings of the plucked koto. The strongest element in Tokaido Road is LeFanu’s sensitive use of the combined western and Japanese sound palette of the Okeanos ensemble, which combines the likes of sho and koto with oboe, clarinet, viola and cello. The piece is well paced and meticulously thought through, with spare instrumental lines exquisitely woven with the voices and deftly conducted by Dominic Wheeler. The director Caroline Clegg and choreographer Nando Messias guide the body language of the old Hiroshige (baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, speaking) and the young, travelling Hiroshige (Williams, singing), the two lovers Kikuyo (Raphaela Papadakis) and Mariko (Caryl Hughes), and Tomoko Komura’s superb mime artistry. Every word is audible, every movement is eloquent and Kimie Nakano’s design remains long in the mind’s eye.
—The Times (8 July 2014)
Inspired by the Japanese artist Hiroshige’s woodblock print series 53 Stations of the Tokaido, LeFanu and her librettist Nancy Gaffield have created an existential journey in speech, song, mime and dance with Hiroshige’s pictures projected. What with unhappy love, treacherous rivers and wintry scenes, it’s rather like an oriental Winterreise. We’re left with Hiroshige in old age, singing his own epitaph, and the dying murmurs of the sho (Japanese mouth organ) and flickerings of the plucked koto. The strongest element in Tokaido Road is LeFanu’s sensitive use of the combined western and Japanese sound palette of the Okeanos ensemble, which combines the likes of sho and koto with oboe, clarinet, viola and cello. The piece is well paced and meticulously thought through, with spare instrumental lines exquisitely woven with the voices and deftly conducted by Dominic Wheeler. The director Caroline Clegg and choreographer Nando Messias guide the body language of the old Hiroshige (baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, speaking) and the young, travelling Hiroshige (Williams, singing), the two lovers Kikuyo (Raphaela Papadakis) and Mariko (Caryl Hughes), and Tomoko Komura’s superb mime artistry. Every word is audible, every movement is eloquent and Kimie Nakano’s design remains long in the mind’s eye.
—The Times (8 July 2014)
Dream Hunter chamber opera for 4 singers and chamber ensemble of 7 players (2011)
An impressive new chamber opera by Nicola LeFanu. Fuller's is a model libretto, inspiring responses and finding its fulfilment in LeFanu's sentient and highly charged music. Tracking the nerve system of each character, her score is both spiky with tension and, particularly in the voice of Catarina (delectably sung by Charmian Bedford) sensually melismatic.. these were quite some words, quite some music. The subtlety of word and music makes this an irresistible 50 minutes that festival directors should be quick to take up.
—The Times (February 2012)
A tautly dramatic hour of intensely coloured, sinuous music. Director Carmen Jakobi produced some wonderfully fresh ideas… the ensemble Lontano played with needle-sharp precision under the assured direction of Odaline de la Martinez.
—The Observer (February 2012)
From the first, LeFanu revealed operatic ability. She sets words well. She has a command of picturesque, imaginative instrumental colour. Dream Hunter held the attention securely. Martinez and Lontano eloquently sounded LeFanu’s arresting score. Caryl Hughes’ singing passed with honours.. Charmian Bedford’s performance was eloquent. Dream Hunter is an opera I’ll not forget’.
—Opera (April 2012)
An impressive new chamber opera by Nicola LeFanu. Fuller's is a model libretto, inspiring responses and finding its fulfilment in LeFanu's sentient and highly charged music. Tracking the nerve system of each character, her score is both spiky with tension and, particularly in the voice of Catarina (delectably sung by Charmian Bedford) sensually melismatic.. these were quite some words, quite some music. The subtlety of word and music makes this an irresistible 50 minutes that festival directors should be quick to take up.
—The Times (February 2012)
A tautly dramatic hour of intensely coloured, sinuous music. Director Carmen Jakobi produced some wonderfully fresh ideas… the ensemble Lontano played with needle-sharp precision under the assured direction of Odaline de la Martinez.
—The Observer (February 2012)
From the first, LeFanu revealed operatic ability. She sets words well. She has a command of picturesque, imaginative instrumental colour. Dream Hunter held the attention securely. Martinez and Lontano eloquently sounded LeFanu’s arresting score. Caryl Hughes’ singing passed with honours.. Charmian Bedford’s performance was eloquent. Dream Hunter is an opera I’ll not forget’.
—Opera (April 2012)
The Bourne for soprano and harp (2008)
the highpoint for me turns out to be Nicola LeFanu's setting of Christina Rossetti. The Bourne is a minutely balanced work with a harp accompaniment (played by Lucy Wakeford) that gently frames and shadows the bewitching contours of the melody. Melancholic, meditative and profoundly moving, sung with minute control by Ms Atherton, Ms LeFanu's song is utterly transporting.
—The Economist (April 2009)
the highpoint for me turns out to be Nicola LeFanu's setting of Christina Rossetti. The Bourne is a minutely balanced work with a harp accompaniment (played by Lucy Wakeford) that gently frames and shadows the bewitching contours of the melody. Melancholic, meditative and profoundly moving, sung with minute control by Ms Atherton, Ms LeFanu's song is utterly transporting.
—The Economist (April 2009)
Misterium Mirabile for SSA choir (1999) & Rosa sine Spine for SSA choir (2002)
two exquisite carols by Nicola LeFanu
—The Times (January 2008)
two exquisite carols by Nicola LeFanu
—The Times (January 2008)
Light Passing chamber opera for seven solo singers, chamber ensemble and small chorus (2004)
a welcome and absorbing addition to Britain’s post-Britten chamber operas … it has the equipment to entertain and illuminate for years to come
—The Times (October 2004)
an opera that challenges and satisfies in equal measure
—Opera (January 2005)
LeFanu’s boldly invigorating and moving modern chamber opera, based on the life of Clement VI (1291-1352), generally viewed as the most brilliant of the Avignon popes. LeFanu and her highly skilled librettist John Edmonds have turned Clement’s life into a thoughtful and profoundly engaging stage work
—Church Times (November 2004)
a welcome and absorbing addition to Britain’s post-Britten chamber operas … it has the equipment to entertain and illuminate for years to come
—The Times (October 2004)
an opera that challenges and satisfies in equal measure
—Opera (January 2005)
LeFanu’s boldly invigorating and moving modern chamber opera, based on the life of Clement VI (1291-1352), generally viewed as the most brilliant of the Avignon popes. LeFanu and her highly skilled librettist John Edmonds have turned Clement’s life into a thoughtful and profoundly engaging stage work
—Church Times (November 2004)
Catena for eleven solo strings (2001)
Even more rewarding is Catena.. it’s an absorbing, subtly evolving and imaginatively textured study which employs microtonal intervals to judicious and liberating effect
—The Gramophone (April 2005)
[Catena] demonstrates LeFanu’s skill in building and sustaining large structures. Sheerly beautiful and passionate, its riches are characteristically understated and implicit, the brilliance of the writing always at the service of the musical argument.
—Tempo (April 2006)
Even more rewarding is Catena.. it’s an absorbing, subtly evolving and imaginatively textured study which employs microtonal intervals to judicious and liberating effect
—The Gramophone (April 2005)
[Catena] demonstrates LeFanu’s skill in building and sustaining large structures. Sheerly beautiful and passionate, its riches are characteristically understated and implicit, the brilliance of the writing always at the service of the musical argument.
—Tempo (April 2006)
Amores for horn and strings (2004)
there was backbone here as well as beauty, and in Richard Watkins’ hands the horn part ricocheted around with thrilling, dramatic effect.
—The Times (February 2004)
In these evocative five movements, full of haunting allusions, a central lyrical nocturne liberated the horn into a brilliant extended cadenza in the fourth, with the Goldberg’s vibrant strings drawn back into a passionate and taut argument in the finale.
—The Guardian (February 2004)
there was backbone here as well as beauty, and in Richard Watkins’ hands the horn part ricocheted around with thrilling, dramatic effect.
—The Times (February 2004)
In these evocative five movements, full of haunting allusions, a central lyrical nocturne liberated the horn into a brilliant extended cadenza in the fourth, with the Goldberg’s vibrant strings drawn back into a passionate and taut argument in the finale.
—The Guardian (February 2004)
The Same Day Dawns for soprano and ensemble (1974)
Nicola LeFanu is a composer of exceptional gifts of head and heart.
—Michael Steinberg in The Boston Globe (November 1974)
Nicola LeFanu is a composer of exceptional gifts of head and heart.
—Michael Steinberg in The Boston Globe (November 1974)