CD: Wuorinen, Cyclops 2000; A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky

Charles Wuorinen's tangled and hyperactive music may be an acquired taste, but it has an undeniable integrity and it is clearly the product of a distinctive creative mind. The performance of the 1975 Stravinsky Reliquary - in which Wuorinen incorporates some musical fragments from the last months of the great composer's life as part of the tribute - has been available before on Oliver Knussen's Deutsche Grammophon disc of late Stravinsky.

The recording here of Cyclops 2000 is taken from the work's premiere, which the Sinfonietta gave at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London five years ago. It's an impressively argued single movement, lasting around 25 minutes, and it proceeds, as Wuorinen describes it, "in fits and starts" along a circuit of solos and duets which gets ever more dense and impacted. The effect is much like that of a chamber concerto which is driven along by its own internal logic. The work makes for an exhilarating ride, and it possesses a final destination that is quite unexpected.