Dean Burry’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman has now been released on CD.  I think it’s the same performance that was previously released on Youtube by Queen’s University.  If it’s not the same performance then it’s certainly the same performers and I really don’t have more than a few incidental thoughts to add to my review of that concert.

Listening to it again though I was struck by the links to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and also by the way Burry subverts popular tunes along the way.  There’s a particularly weird version for flute and struck cello of The British Grenadiers for example.

I suppose not everyone will appreciate using quite modern techniques; twelve tone, prepared piano, extended cello etc, to set an essentially Romantic, even somewhat retro, poem but I think it works and the more I listen to the more I like it.  And, of course, Krisztina Szabó is fabulous, as ever.

The recording is excellent.  I listened to 48kHz/24 bit digital but CD quality FLAC and MP3 are also available as well as physical CD.  The booklet is excellent with full texts and bios but also a detailed synopsis that links the music to the text.

Catalogue number: Centrediscs CMCCD 32123