The recordings of the cantata Angel Fighter, from 2011, and the ensemble piece In Broken Images, first performed the following year, bring the Birtwistle catalogue almost up to date. The only significant recent works not yet available on disc are the Violin Concerto of 2011 and the piano concerto Responses from last year. While In Broken Images, with its antiphonal instrumental groups and echoes of Giovanni Gabrieli, is the latest addition to the series of pieces Birtwistle has composed for the London Sinfonietta that now stretches back over more than 40 years, Angel Fighter, composed for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, is a spare and strikingly original piece of dramatic storytelling. It presents the Old Testament tale of Jacob wrestling an angel as a ritualised game between the tenor Jacob (Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts) and the counter-tenor Angel (Andrew Watts) and climaxes in one of the great dramatic moments in Birtwistle’s concert music, even if not quite all that theatricality comes across in the recording, which was taken from the UK premiere at the 2011 Proms.
