While composing his large-scale operas Mask of Orpheus and Gawain, Sir Harrison Birtwistle worked out many of his ideas simultaneously in separate orchestral pieces, which are thematically connected to the stage works but otherwise intended to be performed in concert. One may get a taste of the lugubrious tone of Orpheus in the ever-cycling, funereal music of The Triumph of Time, and imagine in Gawain's Journey some of the perils the knight faces in the related opera. Yet Birtwistle's extremely abstract music is a tough slog, and many listeners will find it difficult to understand and appreciate -- if not for its grim dissonance and atonality, then for its somber orchestration and extremely slow pacing. The
Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by
Elgar Howarth, is spacious and unhurried, and succeeds in conveying the composer's vast time frames and tragic moods through its grave performances. Even so, the recording is unfocused and distant, and many dense passages are indistinct and too hazy to sustain attention. Ritual Fragment, performed by the
London Sinfonietta without a conductor, is an easier piece for most listeners to follow, for its chain of instrumental solos and simple structure are plainly delineated, and the sound quality is much clearer than in the other two works.