Harrison Birtwistle's highly abstract music is not for everyone. It tears itself into component sounds and asks the listener to re-assemble them into something greater than their sum. It takes work. But the composer has a committed champion in the Nash Ensemble, and those who want to immerse themselves in Birtwistle's universe of musical gesture should be very satisfied with the group's 2002 Black Box release The Woman and the Hare. The members of the ensemble lavish each individual note with texture, articulation, nuance, and shading -- scaling their performance to the vision of the composer. In the vocal selections, soprano Claron McFadden follows suit, prioritizing crystalline clarity and atmosphere over more conventional lyricism and integrating her sound into the ensemble. The two major vocal works on the album are The Woman and the Hare and the Entr'actes and Sappho Fragments. In the first, Birtwistle gives the bulk of David Harsent's te...