Here, if nothing else, we have the chance to assess Barry Anderson's influence as collaborator on the electronic music in Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus. The jangles at 6'00'' in Anderson's Mask, and the electronic organ blips with echo chamber at 12'25'', immediately lead the ear back to the strange mythic regions of Birtwistle's masterpiece. But throughout Anderson's 40-minute piece there is a singular lack of the kind of musical resourcefulness and assured handling of context which made Orpheus such an overwhelming experience. For long stretches it is rhythmically invertebrate, the percussion rarely justify their presence, and the flute writing is cliche-ridden; Anderson finally encumbers his work with a positively embarrassing homily on the significance of the mask.
I am sorry to speak ill of a man whose all too early death (at the age of 52 in 1987) deprived us of one of the great enabling forces in electro-acoustic music. But insofar as Mask aspires to more than technological ingenuity I cannot hear it as anything but an artistic failure. Songs Penyeach and Colla voce also share the tedious unpredictability of so much 1970s ensemble and vocal music. But the most recent piece, Sound the tucket sonance... and the note to mount from 1980, is another matter altogether. Here Anderson's imagination is geared up to something far more incisive, keeping the musical interest alive, not just by inventing new ideas but by reacting to previous ones. The trombone writing is effective, and its relation to the two-track tape well judged, so that the material all seems self-propelling. All the music on the disc seems to have been carefully realized and the insert-notes are informative and helpful.'