Where to start?

Three of Barry’s works

String Quartet No. 4, ‘First Sorrow’ (2006-07)

Listen for the tune played simultaneously on two violins, one a tiny fraction sharper than the other. The result is a sound that burns with longing, like a vivid but distant memory – perhaps of a harmonium in a rural Irish church. Fast, loud arcs of joyous music follow before two high voices enter as if from within. Like much of Barry’s music, ‘First Sorrow’ ends with a twinkle in its eye.

Hard D (1995)

Barry’s years in Amsterdam and the music of Louis Andriessen resonate through this warm and supple score for woodwind, brass, piano and double bass. Its fuzzy saxophones and pugnacious trumpets skip along, missing beats as they please – more Joycean jig than cool continental abstraction.

‘I feel bound to tell you’

(Act I) from The Importance of Being Earnest (2010)

The bass-baritone Lady Bracknell, perhaps Barry’s best-known character, is at her gruffest here as she gives Algernon an imperious grilling.

This short scene is an introduction to the unique vocal writing and cubist word setting that make Barry’s operas so idiosyncratic and engaging.