Home listening - Iestyn Davies, Fretwork and the Hebridean Ensemble

The Guardian 0

There are no ifs about Davies and Fretwork’s pairing of Nyman and Purcell. And on the frontline with Nigel Osborne

• 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. His 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.