Liza Lim’s music brings, it would seem, a metaphysical baggage with it. According to the insert notes by Max Nyffeler which accompany this disc, ‘she has discovered parallels between the Sufi world of thought and the Taoism she is so familiar with’.

In fact, The Heart’s Ear, the work Nyffeler is discussing specifically, is probably the only piece on this disc even to suggest such a possibility, and then perhaps only because it is actually built upon a fragment of Sufi music. Elsewhere, she is clearly, her Asian-Australian roots notwithstanding, seeking to graduate in the university of Western modernism. And she does this very well: Voodoo Child (on texts by Sappho, unlikely though the title makes this sound!) and Veil (the most recent piece on the disc, dating from 1999) in particular more than establish her credentials in this respect. They also claim Asian heritage, but the references to Mongolian overtone singing are negated by the fact that the solo voice is a soprano, and the colouristic devices of Veil remind one of the French tradition as much as anything further East. With Philtre, for solo violin, one does indeed feel the air of other planets, but waiting for the air to turn into a gale is frustrating: throughout the disc, I was waiting for the hugely talented to escape the bonds of European academic modernism – what she could do with performers such as those on this collection! – but for that I think we must wait for the next recording.