Comparisons, we know, smell bad, and seem particularly inappropriate in the case of such a loner as David Lumsdaine, whose works, scarce and wonderful and in many ways quite unlike each other, have come out of a solitary journey. But maybe a connection could be drawn with the music of Charles Ives, at a level below style. Lumsdaine is a more sophisticated artist, but there is a guilelessness that seems familiar, if perhaps only because it is so rare: both mean what they write, without compromises or excuses or inhibitions. And Lumsdaine, like Ives, feels landscape and history as close as the end of his pen, with the difference that the landscape and history and those of his native Australia.

[On Hagaromo at the Proms 1983] Indeed, not for quite some years have I heard a new orchestral piece so stunning and so rich in new experience. What happens in the composition is that the orchestra is made to dance, and to reveal, for itself and for its audience, its own beauty in a thousand new colours and shapes. There are sheets of string and wind tone dappled with pitched percussion as a Klimt is dappled with gold... Lumsdaine's imaginary landscape has a searching, critical human presence...

[On A Tree Telling of Orpheus...] Setting a long and striking poem is not necessarily an easy or even a grateful task for a composer, but Lumsdaine has brought it off triumphantly. Using a fresh and inexhaustible instrumental energy to give the vocal line strong rhythmic support and momentum, Lumsdaine unlocks a dazzling fund of songful invention, varying this methods from syllabic fidelity to baroque and extravagant flourishes. Hearing the voice and its entourage of instruments setting off on another joyously propelled excursion reminded me of one of those unstoppable and rhythmically tricky polyphonic rondeaux of the 15th century, rotating as if forever through its daisy chain of melody and counter-melody...