The austerity of presentation as favoured by the Another Timbre label is doubtless intended to place emphasis wholly on the sound of the music therein, but a few words on the composer might not come amiss. Hailing from Norwich, John Lely has ploughed a productive furrow in the ‘experimental’ domain that has been central to British music throughout the post-war era. Relatively prolific and often performed, his output will be most familiar to those who frequent YouTube: The Harmonics of Real Strings has been championed by Anton Lukoszevieze over the past decade and his recording amply underlines the concept’s inwardly focused intensity.

In the words of the composer, ‘Essentially it is a very slow glissando along the full length of one bowed string. The player uses light finger pressure on the string in what is traditionally referred to as “harmonic” pressure’. Music, then, in which process is at least as crucial as its ultimate destination – though the outcome is no less considered than in similarly reductive or slow-burning pieces by such (very different!) figures as Scelsi or Feldman. Presented here are four realisations – progressively decreasing in overall duration and, revealingly, numbered in reverse order (hence from IV to I). Heard thus, the effect is of a subtly incremental increase in expressive velocity – as if the sound were gaining all the while in momentum – though the prevailing quality is of an ethereal inwardness. Lukoszevieze renders it all with the requisite understatement, heard in a close and yet atmospheric setting wholly in accord with this music.