Surely there are plenty of people here who are interested in Bryars' work?

I certainly am (though I find the Tom Waits Jesus' Blood difficult to forgive, and I like Waits' work too). I don't know anything about this particular piece though. I've ordered it and I shall report in due course.

Last Chance Disco by Acoustic Ladyland.

The library has this classified as "Jazz" and I first heard about them on Jazz on 3, but if I'd just heard this with no further info, I wouldn't have called it Jazz - perhaps it's because the lead instrument is a saxophone?

I've considered buying this, as I was impressed by the excerpt on the Gramophone cover disc last month (yes...hangs head in shame, I still purchase it, but I have a subscription wth IRR, honest...)


And that is recommendation enough!!  

What? You mean his piece ends with that bl*&dy waltz?

Right, that's it. I'm never listening to another work by Gavin Bryars. Too risky.

My CD hasn't arrived yet... do you prefer the string quartet versions or the others?

While I was away I indulged my Mahlerian tendencies rather a lot and completed my first listenings to Gielen's cycle. Once more: this is unmissable for anyone with an interest in this music. I was a bit underwhelmed by the 8th because the solo singing is a bit undistinguished a lot of the time, and as I've said before the 4th wouldn't be my favourite either, but most of the others - yes. I just ordered his 10th having only the Adagio in the box set (why was that I wonder).

I also had a listen to the Mazzetti realisation of the 10th as conducted by Lopez Cobos. This now sounds much less convincing to me than it used to. While the orchestration is convincing enough as such, in terms of density and colour, Mazzetti's countermelodies, while they happen in the right places for the right reasons so to speak, are always recognisable as such on account of their relative unsubtlety. I've suspected for some time that movements 2, 4 and (especially) 5 are not just incomplete in terms of instrumentation but also in terms of harmony, which here, even when the textures are tastefully filled out, seem unwarrantedly to pull back from the agonising multiple suspensions of the first movement into an inappropriately unsophisticated harmonic world. So I think, not without regret, that the Cooke realisation is still the best way of hearing the music so far, since it is at least pretty much all Mahler and doesn't pretend to be a completed piece. Maybe there's still room for more developments on this front.

You've not read the programme notes, eh richard?* Gielen had a sort of road to Damascus reconsideration of his rejection of performing versions of the whole work. At the time of the concert in which just the Adagio was played, he was dead against performing the whole work. He discusses his change of view in the notes which accompany the separate CD of the 10th.

* You did get the notes booklet with your Gielen set, didn't you? If not, email Hänssler, they will probably be very obliging and put one in the post for you. They certainly sorted my missing booklet for me.