Both of these substantial offerings by New Zealander Ross Harris (b1945) employ texts by his countryman and favourite collaborator, Vincent O’Sullivan (b1937). Face is the more recent of the two, a 37-minute cantata jointly commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra to mark the centenary of the conclusion of the Great War. Conceived in part as a tribute to the surgeon Sir Harold Gillies (1882-1960) and his remarkable team in the pioneering field of facial reconstruction, O’Sullivan’s words are set to music of considerable emotive power, idiomatic skill and healing compassion, the idiom eminently approachable, though not without a sometimes harrowing astringency. It’s a striking achievement, whose (to quote the composer’s own description) ‘symphonic songs and choruses weave the various experiences of anticipation, and loss, hope deferred and then despaired of, in the voices of a soldier, his fiancée, the damaged human psyche, and the best intentions of science’. The present outstandingly eloquent and dedicated display under Antony Hermus in Auckland Town Hall comprised the work’s world premiere, which, like the UK premiere just nine days later on April 28, 2018, at the Barbican, featured images of faces projected on to a screen behind the performers.

Completed three years earlier in 2015, Harris’s Sixth Symphony plays without a break for some 27 minutes. It sets four texts adapted by O’Sullivan, the first of which, ‘Last Letter Home’, provided the work’s initial spark and was inspired by the final thoughts of an Iranian woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was executed by hanging for murder while trying to defend herself from the policeman who had raped her. Its reflective, consolatory tone is largely shared by the three remaining vocal sections and forms a marked contrast with the altogether nervier demeanour of the three purely orchestral interludes that bind the whole structure. Suffice to say, the symphony receives another first-rate performance from the Auckland band, this time under its Italian-born Danish music director Giordano Bellincampi, while the Australian mezzo-soprano Fiona Campbell delivers O’Sullivan’s words with keen empathy.

Top-notch sound and judicious balance from the team of producer Wayne Laird and engineer Adrian Hollay. The composer himself supplies succinct notes for each work and the booklet includes full texts. This bold Naxos pairing strikes me as well worth investigating.