Christos Hatzis is recognised as ‘one of the most important composers writing today’. His music bears a number of influences – Christian spirituality, Byzantine music, as well as more popular idioms – and is marked by a strong identification with his source material. Two of his most prominent interpreters join forces on this recording to present two Flute Concertos. Departures is a memorial piece written at a time of personal loss and the 2011 tsunami at Fukushima, Japan and its aftermath. Its appeal is driven by the composer’s unique and eclectic style, which brings in elements of traditional Japanese folk music, blues and burlesque music. Overscript is a commentary on Bach’s Concerto in G minor for Flute, which is ingeniously quoted in full, but in fragmented form, within Hatzis’s own composition.