Helen Grime: Night Songs

Helen Grime’s Debut Disc contrasts orchestral works – including her first Hallé commission,the nocturne Near Midnight (2013) – with smaller-scale pieces featuring the Hallé Soloists. The earliest work here, Virga, is a densely-packed miniature, taking its title from precipitation which evaporates before it reaches the ground; its textures are dominated by falling cascades of woodwind droplets. Night Songs was commissioned for the 2012 BBC Proms and premiered by the BBC SO and Oliver Knussen.

Other works include Into the faded air – a string sextet titled after a line from T.S.Eliot’s Four Quartets – the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Hallé principal Lynsey Marsh, and Everyone Sang – inspired by Siegfried Sassoon.