Classical home listening - Param Vir, Prokofiev, Copland and Poulenc

The Guardian 0

An album devoted to the music of Param Vir was worth the wait. And three wartime sonatas inspire Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt

• Param Vir’s Wheeling Past the Stars (NMC), the title taken from his settings of texts by Rabindranath Tagore, could be an exemplar for life: many styles and traditions living freely, fruitfully, distinctly, in the mind of one person. Born in Delhi in 1952, UK-based, Vir combines the Indian classical music of his formative years and the western tradition he later embraced, studying with Peter Maxwell Davies and Oliver Knussen.

Raga Fields (2014), conductor Enno Poppe, forges the improvisatory framework of a raga, for sarod soloist (the virtuosic Soumik Datta), with notated passages for 17 ensemble players, here Klangforum Wien. The result is meditative and sonically inventive, neither crossover nor pastiche. The Tagore cycle, for cello (Ulrich Heinen) and soprano (Patricia Auchterlonie), sets four sharply contrasting poems. Auchterlonie’s assured coloratura and Heinen’s springy pizzicato, delicate harmonics and rushes of glissando act in sensuous dialogue. Before Krishna (1987, London Chamber Orchestra) and Hayagriva (2005, Schönberg Ensemble) complete this album, the first – long overdue – dedicated to Vir’s aurally rich music.