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David Wallace: Cliff Edge on CD

September 2026, Metier Records presents Cliff Edge from Irish-born composer David Wallace: a

striking new album of six works that illuminate his distinctive approach to material-led

composition. Scored for forces ranging from solo bass clarinet to mixed chamber ensemble, the

album presents a world where musical ideas behave like living organisms - shifting, resisting, and

revealing themselves through pressure and transformation. The performers include Heather

Roche, Chenyin LI, Jean Kelly (harp), James Widden (violin/viola), Heather

Holford, and other leading UK and international soloists and chamber musicians.

Wallace's compositional style blends classical elegance with modern innovation, often including

elements of traditional Irish music, at times also featuring extended techniques or electronics. His

music takes shape organically, instinctively allowing the music to go where it wants emotionally,

balancing tradition with a fresh, contemporary perspective to create a unique voice.

The pieces on Cliff Edge were written between 2006 and 2025 for different performers and

circumstances, yet they share a common thread: each begins with a musical material that finds it's

own path throughout the piece. These materials can be as simple as a grain of an instrument, the

weight of a harmony, the friction between two lines, or the memory of a place. Some are intimate

gifts; others are studies in instability or quiet acts of devotion. What unites them is a belief that

music has it's own agency - that if you listen closely, the material will show you how it wants to

unfold.

At the heart of the album is the title work, Cliff Edge, a turbulent and finely etched piano piece that

explores instability as a structural force. Surrounding it are five contrasting but deeply connected

works: the fragile, breath-driven L'Oiseau mis en cage for bass clarinet; the ritualised, keening

energy of Banshee for harp and voice; and H.B.J.W., a theme and five variations for violin and cello,

written as a 50th birthday gift.

The album also features Five Vignettes from the River Avon, a set of distilled landscape impressions

for clarinet and basset horn, and Canticles, a luminous triptych for harp, flute, clarinet, and string

quartet that closes the disc with a sense of quiet devotion.

'These works are not stories,' Wallace writes. 'They are environments. Each one begins with a

material that behaves in a particular way, and the piece grows from listening to that behaviour.'

David Wallace studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Richard Baker and in Ireland

with Rhona Clarke, and his music has received international recognition, including awards from

Boston Metro Opera and the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Prize. Residencies at the Guildhall School,

the Cork School of Music, and Clapham Chamber Concerts have shaped his distinctive voice, and

his works are performed widely in the UK and abroad. He is Head of Junior Music Courses at the

Guildhall School.