It is remarkable that Rebecca Saunders – by any measure one of the UK’s leading and most admired composers – has not yet been recorded by this country’s primary new music label, NMC (although her music has appeared on three discs by HCR, which are distributed through NMC). So the announcement of a first release this November is extremely welcome. Even more so is that it will feature one of Saunders’ finest recent works, the blistering Skin (2016), performed by its dedicatee, Juliet Fraser, with Klangforum Wien. Also on the recording is the double percussion concerto void, from 2014, performed by Christian Dierstein, Dirk Rothbrust and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Enno Poppe; and the 2017 string quartet Unbreathed, written for and performed by the Quatuor Diotima.
Here’s a short extract from Skin, a work that Paul Griffiths’ liner notes say ‘stretches its soprano protagonist across the feverishly alive body of instrumentalists. She is this music’s skin. Voice is this music’s skin.’ I await the full recording eagerly; release date is 18 November, be sure to check the NMC website for more details nearer the time.
The Rambler 
Dear Tim, Have noted re the NMC CD of Rebecca Saunders. I have some 7 CDs of her music, including “Stirrings Still”(Wergo), “Blue and Gray”(2008 Musica Viva Festival 2008), “Caerulean”(Huddersfield Records…with two performers I used to hear regularly in Sydney, Carl Rosman and Mark Knoop), “Fletch” by the great Arditti Quartet (Col Legno label), various works by Klangforum Wien on Kairos), “Skin”(2015-16) from Donaueschingen Festival 2016 (Neos CDs) and “Solitude”(Aeon CD). Richard Toop, former musicologist at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music thought highly of her as a composer. Regards, Don.
Is this NMC release just a reissue of the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2016 recording of “Skin” already available (on SACD with 5.1 surround sound) on Neos?
I stopped buying NMC releases years ago (getting them instead from, ahem, other sources) because they were selling CD-Rs instead of CDs without making that clear to the customer. I’m curious to know if the label stopped with that.
Pretty sure it’s a different recording – conductor is given as Bas
Wiegers rather than Titus Engel, and the track is just over a minute longer.
I just received the Shiva Feshareki – Turning World release on NMC and it’s a CD-R, but nowhere on NMC’s website does it state it’s a CD-R. This is completely dishonest. CD-Rs are disposable junk with no protective layering underneath that factory pressed CDs have. To sell junk CD-Rs at full CD price is outrageous. If they are selling CD-Rs they need to label them as CD-Rs. What makes it even worse is they send these CD-Rs to all the worldwide distributors as CDs. I will never buy another disc from NMC. Also, having a CD manufactured today is cheap and there are plants who will do small runs. NMC is just being cheap by sending out burned CD-Rs.
It is the BBC Radio 3 recording of the performance we gave at Huddersfield in 2016 (just a few weeks after the Donaueschingen premiere). Same team but, yes, Bas at the helm rather than Titus. I’d give my eye teeth to make a studio recording of this piece now that it has (and I have?!) matured, but nobody has the money for that these days, sadly.
Thanks, Juliet!