Speakings (2007-08) is the centrepiece of an orchestral trilogy whose outer movements, Body Mandala and …towards a Pure Land, have already been recorded by Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (NMC, 9/08).

The work’s title identifies a powerful, paradoxical metaphor: that music’s capacity to convey meaning – to speak – is in no way inhibited by the absence of sung or spoken text. The intricate yet potently expressive ways in which Speakings does this are made admirably clear in Bruno Bossis’s booklet-notes. Here there is no question of falling back on technology as a substitute for strong emotion. Jonathan Harvey’s ability to work with very basic sound-images and to suggest how elemental physical and spiritual qualities can (and should) generate a genuinely contemporary, living musical language have never been more directly perceptible. By the time this recording was made Volkov and the orchestra had fully surmounted the score’s considerable technical challenges; and although the music yields special rewards when heard in its proper place within the trilogy, the delicacy and imagination of its particular live/electronic synthesis still come vividly across.

Speakings is complemented by a pair of shorter instrumental compositions which animate the adversarial yet complementary relationship between a soloist and an ensemble. In both Scena (1992) and Jubilus (2002) an evident spirituality interacts with those more earthy aspects of conscious life which give the music its dance-like vibrancy and song-like lyricism, realised with maximum spontaneity and technical skill in these recordings. Fixing all the multifarious acoustic nuances of this music on to disc without excessive artifice is a challenging task which the Aeon team have accomplished with special flair.