Laurence Crane - Natural World (2023)

A haunting 55-minute work for voice, piano and electronics by one of the world's leading experimental composers. Natural World is in three sections - Field Guide, Chorus and Seascape. It starts playfully, with Juliet Fraser singing encyclopedia-style facts about birds and animals against Mark Knoop's stop-start piano motif. But, following the introduction of field recordings and then electronics, the music gradually - almost imperceptibly - becomes darker until, without ever explicitly addressing climate change, the listener is drawn into an ominous awareness of the fragility of the natural world and the eco-systems which sustain it. Essential music.