...the whole soundscape glitters with detail, delicious collisions between baroque and contemporary improvisational ideas, and some startlingly effective sounds. Add an immaculate ECM recording, and it becomes an evocative, intense, and often very beautiful experience.

Barry Guy's Folio is a multi-movement cycle for string orchestra, inspired by a stage work by Nikolai Evreinov, The Theatre of the Soul, written in 1912. It is, in part, a reflection on the parallels between the historical situation of that time and place, and our own. Perhaps this dialogue of time and place explains the use of a Baroque and a modern violin among the work's soloists. The cycle brings together free-standing movements of varying length for string orchestra (which can be performed independently of the cycle), connected by a number of 'improvised commentaries' by a combination of the soloists and Barry Guy himself on the double bass. The bringing together of both improvised and through-composed music is another of the cycle's themes, and in several movements the two may occur simultaneously, with the soloist being given a choice of materials from which to draw upon.
The longest work is the 20-minute 'Postlude – Ortiz I – Postlude'. It alternates between quasi-spectral harmonic fields and chaotic episodes, all of which exploit the string orchestra's potential for timbral cohesion and sheer power.
Guy's experience as a string-player comes into its own here, and his own improvisations have real flair and a slightly understated virtuosity: one would have liked to hear more of them. The shorter movements are less contrasted within themselves, more concerned with a single idea.
The intended overall structure is not easy to grasp at first hearing but the performance matches the composer's liking for striking, bold gestures and highly imaged detail. The work's 'quirkiness quotient' is consonant with a certain ECM house-style, with which its devotees will be instantly at home.