Jeremy Shatan reviews When Apathy is Betrayal for AnEarful, describing it as a “tremendously compelling and deeply human experience.” He hears a work in which heart, intellect, and cultural memory converge.

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“Born in Sri Lanka and displaced to Australia, Fenn has put all of her heart, soul, and intellect into this album-length work, and the committed performance by Prague Modern, conducted by Petr Louženský, translates that directly to the listener. Fenn’s heritage is incorporated as well, with percussion inspired by the drumming traditions of Kandy, Sri Lanka’s cultural capital, and vocal writing that draws on the Dhrupad tradition of North India, a form that goes back centuries. Special kudos to sopranos Barbora Kabátková and Pavla Radostova for navigating this challenging material with precision and emotional heat.

The emotions run high in Fenn’s conception, too, which seeks nothing less than to erase the distance we feel from others who are suffering. In just one coup de theatre, she expertly weaves an audio collage of global protest movements, from the Berlin Wall and Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring and climate change, into the fifth movement, people who walk barefoot in their hearts. If that all sounds like a lot of freight for a musical piece to carry, the strength of Fenn’s orchestration and composition results in a tremendously compelling and deeply human experience.”