GRAMOPHONE:
Pianist Ian Pace, who was the star of last year's double-CD Finnissy album from Meter, takes a back seat in this latest addition to the series. It is as well recorded as ever, and offers a substantial and memorable programme. This time it's Christopher Redgate, oboist in Pace's Topologies ensemble, who is featured, and Redgate's phenomenal breath and finger control is heard to startling effect in two solo pieces whose titles - Moon going' down and Runnin' wild - evoke jazz standards, while steering well clear of the clichés often found in more explicit 'crossover' music.

All the other works (composed between 1977 and 1990) demonstrate Finnissy's affinity with ethnic musics and, in the case of Lost Lands, with the ideas of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Finnissy has a genius tor transforming diverse source materials into his own intricate, intense style, while remaining true to the ethos of the original. Here, the trilogy formed by Dilok, Delal and Kulamen Dilan is inspired by Kurdish folk music, and in the third piece soprano saxophone replaces oboe in a duelling duet with percussion. This encapsulates the virtuosity with which the composer spins an elaborate yet rawly expressive melodic line against explosive rhythmic patterns which seem to stimulate the melody while at the same time seeking to overwhelm it.

Lost Lands is the longest work, its complex single-movement form well-shaped under expert conductor Mikel Toms. The music is suffused with that spirit of anger and lament which fits with Finnissy's ethical concern to use folk material 'to redress imbalance and neglect'. But Keroiylu for oboe, bassoon and piano is even more powerful. The title refers to an heroic folk dance from Azerbaijan, and in Finnissy's response hyperactive scurryings within narrow spans are set in stark relief by more expansive yet no less dramatic materials. If you need convincing that so-called 'complex' composers live in the real world, you need look no further.
Arnold Whittall

THE SUNDAY TIMES:
This disc, dominated by pieces for oboe (Christopher Redgate), takes one into a world where austerity becomes hypnotic. Dilok, Delal and Kulamen Dilan are harsh, quarter-tonal unfoldings for, respectively, oboe, oboe d'amore and soprano saxophone (Andrew McNeill), each with percussion (Julian Warburton) and evoking Arabic/Islamic music. The oboe solos of Moon's Goin' Down and Runnin' Wild distantly recall the blues. Keroiylu reinvents Azerbaijani folk music for oboe, bassoon and piano. The title piece, a ruminative quintet for soprano saxophone, E flat clarinet, violin, guitar and piano is a larger-scale example of this "recycling of waste" from the cultural margins.
unknown reviewer

MUSICWEB:
Michael Finnissy supplies his own liner note for this collection of small-scale solo and ensemble pieces from the late 1970s and 1980s; every sentence is a gem, and could keep Pseuds Corner supplied with material for quite a while. The music is less pretentious, and sometimes boldly projected. The triptych of Dilok, Delal and Kulamen Dilan combines percussion with various reed instruments and derives its internal processes from Arabic music, while the source for Keroiylu is Azerbaijani folk music. Two other tracks, Runnin' Wild and Moon's Goin' Down, are instrumental solos inflected with quarter tones that are very well negotiated by the oboist Christopher Redgate.
 
My first encounter with Michael Finnissy's uncompromising music was via the pianist Rolf Hind's recital for Tony Wilson's regrettably short-lived Factory Classical imprint. Even alongside Bartók and early James MacMillan, English Country-Tunes seemed anything but what my received wisdom of what that title might signify (certainly no cowpats around!) and engendered a certain degree of trepidation on approaching the present disc. However, this is very much not a recital grounded in the abstract. A fair proportion of it is given over to pieces influenced by the music of ethnic groups which have suffered as a result of so-called "ethnic cleansing". In this case the reference is to the Kurds and the people of Azerbaijan. This links neatly to the title and obvious theme of the main work: Lost Lands. The remaining works, again made patently obvious by their titles, are influenced by blues music. All in all this is a very interesting listen, not easy but certainly not by any means impenetrable. The first three pieces, in which Julian Warburton's excellent percussion underpins the reedsmen's hypnotic and near-improvisatory utterances, are Kurdish in inspiration.

The composer's honest and informative notes place them in a wider context of Arabic/Islamic, Ancient Greek and Karnatic musical traditions, with more contemporary nods to Xenakis and Messiaen. Keroiylu also inhabits similar musical territories, influenced by the folk music of the Caucasus, with oboe and bassoon providing a particularly dense but engaging framework. None of this music can be validly experienced in a casual way but it should present little difficulty to anyone in any way engaged with modern European jazz (as exemplified by certain releases on ECM for instance). Even the "blues" pieces, unique on the disc in that they are for oboe alone, require concentration to appreciate fully but couldn't truly be described as hermetic. Lost Lands itself, nearly 25 minutes in length, perhaps could, yet I found it a very grateful listening experience, recalling (in feeling, if not necessarily form) wonderful music like George Benjamin's classic Eliot inspiration Ringed by the Flat Horizon. Unsurprisingly, given my previous comment (Benjamin was a pupil of the great Frenchman), I also sense a great Messiaen influence, here more than in the composer's direct acknowledgement (see above). Whatever, this is a fascinating disc all round and nowhere near as difficult as Finnissy's previous press might indicate. Give it a go!
Neil Horner

THE WIRE:
Dilok (1982) and Delal (1984) - both for oboe and percussion - and Kulamen Dilan (1990) for soprano saxophone and percussion draw on Islamic or Arabic sources, while Moon's goin' down (1980) and Runnin' Wild (1978) draw a trajectory between Sidney Bechet and the genie that John Coltrane let out of the bag with Ascension . The obsession in these pieces is to 'fake' on manuscript paper the spontaneity and heat of music that only comes alive during real-time performance. These performances by oboist Chris Redgate and saxophonist Andrew McNeil are ebullient and joyous, using Finnissy's text to penetrate performance practices that aren't their own. Lost Lands itself is from 1977 (making it a near contemporary of Finnissy's classic English Country-Tunes ) and here the composer is at his most enigmatic and opaque. Scored for the odd combination of soprano saxophone, violin, guitar, piano and shrill E flat clarinet, the pieces builds from stuttering fragments into an accelerating arc that moves so slowly, it's impossible to gauge its progress. The music manages to be totally disorientating as it compels you further into its web - pulling off such contradiction is no mean feat.
Philip Clark

RECORDS INTERNATIONAL:
These ensemble and solo works share an anthropological basis, being, as the composer eloquently expresses it, derived from "the detritus of musical cultures potentially obliterated by ethnic cleansing or styles and genres dismissed as obsolete or commercially unsustainable." Unmistakable elements of Islamic and ancient Indian Karnatic music are readily detectable in the trilogy Dilok - Delal - Kulamen Dilan, ingeniously transmuted into Finnissy's unmistakable transcriptive style, which seems to be emerging as one of his great strengths as a composer as more of his considerable output becomes readily available. The two solo oboe works allude to jazz without referring specifically to established works in the genre, apart from the appropriated titles. For the most part, these pieces eschew the more extreme manifestations of the much-mentioned 'complexicist' style, exhibiting a relatively approachable aspect of the composer's musical personality.
Unnamed reviewer