Classical music albums to hear right now

Over the past decade, the reputation of Australian composer Liza Lim has grown steadily, with consistently strong chamber and orchestral albums released on topflight experimental music labels like Wergo and Kairos.

Singing In Tongues collects vocal and operatic music written by Lim between 1993 and 2008 — all of it handled persuasively by her longtime collaborators in the Elision Ensemble. The earliest piece here is an abstract take on The Oresteia. Its airy extended techniques, snatches of luminous vocal harmony and gnarly full-ensemble blasts of sound give a sense of Lim’s approach to music drama. It’s more about travelling between timbres than it is about moving from one plot point to the next. That approach has remained remarkably consistent, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t evolved.

The most recent piece on the album — The Navigator, which concludes this set — is a magnum opus of slippery, sinuous invention. Fragments of the work have been available on YouTube, in Barrie Kosky’s staging. But this first full audio recording reveals Lim’s command of her style. As the piece progresses from a prologue written for an alto Ganassi recorder to the guitar-led opening of the first scene (The Unwinding), her skills as an avantgarde dramatist are on full display.