Turnage – This Silence

There’s a hint of his special vein of elegiac expressiveness in the collection of smaller-scale ensemble pieces brought together on the Nash Ensemble’s beautifully played disc. Some of those – the quietly sensuous Baudelaire songs, sung with perfect focus and intensity by Sally Matthews, or the oboe-and-strings Cantilena – belong to the same period as the LPO’s orchestral pieces, yet deal with a much more personal and expressive world.

The most striking of these works is the two-movement octet This Silence, composed in 1994; its edgy, acid-tinged lyricism and keening melodies are typical of Turnage at his best, and therefore unlike the music of any other composer working today.