CD: Maxwell Davies: Revelation & Fall

Following Decca's two-disc reissue of material from the 1960s and 1970s, EMI has filled more of the gaps in the Maxwell Davies discography with these transfers, which include two of the key vocal works in Davies's development in the 1960s. If the Leopardi Fragments is typical of the coiled intensity of a series of works in which Davies was inspired by Monteverdi, then Revelation and Fall (1966) unpacks that nervous energy as full-blown expressionism, in a setting of a prose-poem by Georg Trakl for a soprano who is required to scream through a loudhailer at the work's climax. It remains one of Davies's most startlingly effective pieces, a vivid precursor of the music-theatre pieces soon to follow, and wonderful to have available on CD at last.