Dobrinka Tabakova, Maxim Rysanov, Dasol Kim, Roman Mints, Kristina Blaumane, BBC Concert Orchestra

Sun Triptych is the second ECM New Series album devoted to the music of Dobrinka Tabakova, the Bulgarian-born composer who has lived in London since 1991. Her first, String Paths (2013), earned a Grammy nomination. This one ranges wider, from intimate pieces for viola and piano to works for string orchestra, written between 2000 and 2011. The title work follows the light on the natural world from dawn to dusk.

The chamber pieces were recorded in August 2020 at the Meistersaal in Berlin, the orchestral ones in July 2021 at Watford Colosseum. The violist Maxim Rysanov plays with the pianist Dasol Kim. The violinist Roman Mints and the cellist Kristina Blaumane are the soloists in Sun Triptych. There Tabakova conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra, which had her as composer in residence from 2017 to 2022. Manfred Eicher produced the album and mixed it with the composer in Munich in January 2025.

The disc opens with Whispered Lullaby (2005), first written for a children's opera, and the Suite in Jazz Style (2009), a chamber reflection on jazz gestures and textures for viola and piano. In Spinning a Yarn (2011) Mints plays both violin and hurdy-gurdy, giving the piece an archaic, folk-like colour. Organum Light (2000), commissioned by the vocal group Opus Anglicanum and heard here for strings, draws on the viol consort music of Orlando Gibbons and Henry Purcell. Fantasy Homage to Schubert (2005) reworks Franz Schubert's Fantasy in C major into a slow, transfigured meditation. The closing Sun Triptych (2007), for violin, cello and strings, moves through Dawn, an arpeggiated Day and a meditative Dusk.

On The Arts Desk Sebastian Scotney wrote that "the outer movements of Sun Triptych in particular have a wonderful sheen." Erik Levi gave it five stars in BBC Music Magazine, praising its accessible writing and naming the title work the most engaging piece on the disc. For Nick Lea at Jazz Views it was "another exceptional recording from the British-Bulgarian composer." Tabakova has said of the title work: "The solace I find in nature permeates this work."

CD edition, ECM New Series 2670, first released in September 2025, with liner notes by the composer.