Given a crystal-clear recording, this excellent Métier disc makes the perfect case for some striking, challenging and ultimately rewarding music…

… the Tippett Quartet prove great advocates, approaching all challenges with their customary fearlessness and expertise.

Richard Blackford who is 70 this year has developed an international career. He is a very fine composer of the type of music, we need in the present day…

This is surely the first time that these song cycles, five of them, have been put together on a CD, and it is a very good idea to share them between two fine singers who have ideal voices for this repertoire…

Each of the five composers inhabits a different sound world, so there is a variety of contrasting musical idioms which makes for a satisfying listen, even all in one sitting. 

Richard Blackford has chosen a group of poems which vividly expresses the stark contrasts in Anjuman’s own life. The joy in her own creativity, black despair at the absence of personal freedom, and even the possibility of self-destruction…