• The British countertenor Iestyn Davies has always extended the expected boundaries of his voice type, singing contemporary works written for him by Nico Muhly and Thomas Adès and now Michael Nyman. The album If (Signum Classics) is a fresh and delicate collaboration with the excellent viol group Fretwork, as versatile in their own way as Davies. Songs by Purcell are set alongside those by Nyman, long associated with the music of 17th-century England through his soundtrack for The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982). Purcell’s Evening Hymn showcase Davies’s famed vocal purity, but so too does the exquisite title song, Nyman’s If, from the soundtrack to 1995 Japanese animation The Diary of Anne Frank. Nyman’s extended energetic instrumental piece Music After a While is an imaginative foil to Purcell’s ethereal Music for a While. Anyone who thinks Nyman’s music stops at his hallmark pulsing rhythms and prominent bass lines will find variety and introspective beauty here, all executed with perfection.
• Chamber music by Nyman’s near contemporary fellow British composer Nigel Osborne is the focus of Sensations of Travel by the Hebrides Ensemble (Delphian). Based in Edinburgh but an intrepid traveller, Osborne has spent time in war zones in the Balkans and in Syria, pioneering his own form of music therapy. Some of that experience is reflected here, each work a tiny drama capturing these far-off landscapes. Balkan Dances and Laments, with its dense rhythms and weeping oboe song, echoes Bosnian music. My beloved, where are you going – Adagio for Vedra is a heartfelt piece for Osborne’s friend Vedra Smailović, “a cellist with frostbitten fingers” who played for the Sarajevo Opera. The Piano Tuner – three preludes and five fugues for piano trio – reworks material from Osborne’s opera based on the novel by Daniel Mason about the tuning of an Erard piano in the colonial Burmese jungle. The six-strong Hebrides Ensemble has immersed itself deeply and winningly in Osborne’s eclectic sound world.
• In The Frontline Music Therapist (BBC Sounds), broadcast on the World Service’s Outlook, Nigel Osborne talks about his work in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the musicians he worked with. It’s a good place to start.
