Ensemble musikFabrik - Saunders: Stirrings Still (2023)

There's hardly any break on the disc between the suitably irascible Choler for two pianos of 2004 and the more discursive solo Crimson, completed the following year, suggesting close connections between them, while the three movements of the impressive Miniata, with solo piano and accordion embedded in wonderfully terraced orchestral and (wordless) choral textures, are all linked by the colour red. That collection is a more rewarding introduction to Saunders' musical world than the austere, mostly solo instrumental pieces on the disc by musikFabrik, most of which seem concerned with the inner structures of sounds in a navel-gazing way.