Album: musikFabrik, Sprechgesäng: Speech Songs (Wergo)

On Sprechgesäng, the German new-music ensemble musikFabrik performs recent compositions investigating the relationship between singing and playing: in the case of Jonathan Harvey's Sprechgesäng, with vocally-phrased "conversations" between oboe, English horn, and the supporting ensemble.

At the other extreme Unsuk Chin's eight-part Cantatrix Sopranica for soprano, counter-tenor and ensemble satirises female voices in various contexts. Elsewhere, Beat Furrer's recitativo features breathless low-key narration (in German) of a Schnitzler play, an interior monologue aped by the interplay of instruments; and Georges Aperghis's Babil an instrumental "conversation" which becomes irritatingly shrill in places.

Download this Sprechgesäng; Cantatrix Sopranica