Turnage ranges far and wide while the Nash provide definitive performances.
David Gutman

This tightly packed CD contains seven fine, characterful chamber pieces. They represent the essence of Turnage. Stephen Pettitt

There’s a hint of his special vein of elegiac expressiveness in the collection of smaller-scale ensemble pieces brought together on the Nash Ensemble’s beautifully played disc. Some of those - the quietly sensuous Baudelaire songs, sung with perfect focus and intensity by Sally Matthews, or the oboe-and-strings Cantilena - belong to the same period as the LPO’s orchestral pieces, yet deal with a much more personal and expressive world.

The most striking of these works is the two-movement octet This Silence, composed in 1994; its edgy, acid-tinged lyricism and keening melodies are typical of Turnage at his best, and therefore unlike the music of any other composer working today."

Andrew Clements

Even if I hadn’t known that the opening work on Turnage: This Silence (ONYX4005)) was inspired by a Jon Silkin poem about grief I could easily have sussed the complexion of its narrative from just listening. That’s the great thing about Turnage: he invites you straight in - you never feel the awkward chill of distance, even in the few instances where the octet "This Silence" turns complex or knotty.

First to sound is the horn. The strings follow on, before the mood intensifies and a sort jazz lament brings us down to street level. Just before the seven-minute mark, a heartbreaking descent for solo strings takes over - as if escape is no longer viable and grief needs to be confronted head on.

There’s dancing, too, in this marvellous piece - weird fidgety dancing, more nervous than celebratory - while in "L’invitation au Voyage" (with soprano Sally Matthews) Turnage beckons us to a world of bliss much as Duparc had done many years earlier. Other works programmed - including the punchy "Slide Stride" for piano and string quartet - grab your attention like a novel you can’t put down. It might seem strange to say this, but wherever you join Turnage’s work, he spins the uncanny illusion that he’s listening to you as intently as you are to him. Rob Cowan