Bird Concerto - Harvey's hommage to Messiaen - is a celebration of the kind of technical advances in electroacoustics which the creator of Oiseaux exotiques and the Catalogue d’oiseaux was never able to explore. Harvey started writing the piece when he was in California and says that ‘indigo bunting, orchard oriole, golden crowned sparrow ... are some of the forty colourful Californian birds whose songs and cries sparked the ignition of this work’.

The bird sounds have been innovatively transformed to create a mesmeric dialogue between nature and art. Harvey sets the piano soloist (the work was commissioned by pianist Joanna MacGregor) the challenge of combining piano playing and triggering a sampler/synthesizer so that the live electronics can be realised in real-time performance.

Other works on this disc are Other Presences, for trumpet and multi-loop effects, and two versions of the canonic Ricercare una melodia (1984), originally written for trumpet and quadraphonic tape-delay system, but here performed on oboe and cello, with live electronics from Sound Intermedia.

Contents:
1. Bird Concerto with Pianosong
Hidéki Nagano (piano)
London Sinfonietta / David Atherton
Recorded live at the Warsaw Autumn Festival 2009 by Polish National Radio

2. Ricercare una melodia for oboe
Gareth Hulse (oboe); Sound Intermedia (live electronics)
Recorded live by BBC Radio 3

3. Other Presences
Paul Archibald (trumpet); Sound Intermedia (live electronics)
Recorded live by BBC Radio 3

4. Ricercare una melodia for cello
Tim Gill (cello); Sound Intermedia (live electronics)
Recorded live by BBC Radio 3