The seemingly polarized but reconcilable elements of protest and a yearning for space and time for contemplation appear to be buried in Williams’s psyche. They broke audible surface about 25 years ago with his recording of songs of Theodorakis with Maria Farandouri (CBS – nla), and here they find full expression. Turkish, Greek and Greek-influenced music are the backbone of the programme: Domeniconi’s programmatic Koyunbaba speaks for itself, as does the music of Theodorakis (“love, loneliness and freedom of expression”), and Satie’s is seen as an “early reaction against 19th-century Romanticism”; Houghton’s Stele and Williams’s own skilfully wrought Aeolian Suite, too, have declared connections with Greek music.
Total technical mastery is something that has never been lacking in Williams’s performances (barring the occasional slips that all artists make in concert), and to it he here adds a modest but unfailingly tasteful ability as an arranger. However, I can recollect no recording in which it is at the service of such emotional intensity. Koyunbaba is a work that can seem interminable – and in many hands it does, but Williams’s performance of it is heartfelt, not contrived, and Houghton’s Stele reveals the longings that can dwell in the souls of composers who began with jazz, rock and media music. If I had to live with only one recording by Williams it would (so far) be this one. It is perhaps the most personal musical statement he has yet made, and it is in every sense immaculately recorded.'