MORTEN LAURIDSEN (b.1943): Mid-Winter Songs for Chorus and Orchestra (Britten Sinfonia), For Chorus: Les chansons des roses, Nocturnes, I will lift up mine eyes, O come, let us sing unto the Lord, Ave, dulcissima Maria.

Description: A composer who has an especially strong affinity for the human voice, and who has made a passionate study of literary and poetic texts, Lauridsen has emerged as a strikingly original voice in contemporary music, with his output of meticulously crafted symphonic choral cycles. Not simply assemblages of evocative text-setting, these works have a clearly perceptible underlying structure which lends a clear sense of progression to the poetic and musical argument. The Mid-Winter Songs (Robert Graves) are the most emotionally complex works here, and the most extrovert; the subtly mysterious Nocturnes demonstrate the composer's gift for direct emotional utterance without sentimentality. Harmonically one may feel the presence of Britten or Bernstein, but this is not to deny the composer's clearly identifiable individual personality. French-English texts. Polyphony; Stephen Layton.