This album could also be called ‘Wonders of the Modern Orchestra,’ because all the works on the programme, also world premieres, are resplendent jewels of contemporary orchestration, all in a neo-romantic style reminiscent of great film music. Listening to Thomas Adès’s Three-Piece Suite from Powder Her Face, one is struck by the similarities with the music of Danny Elfman, especially the splashy use of orchestra. Then there is Jonathan Dove’s all-but-in-title trombone concerto Stargazer that projects us into a blissful, cosmic weightlessness, as if we were levitating in a starry setting. Eurydice is a suite taken from an opera by Matthew Aucoin, which places the famous character from the Greek myth at the centre of the narrative, rather than her famous lover, Orpheus. Here again, the music is masterfully written and evocative of the journey to the Underworld, the abortive return and the final sense of loss in this story. The final movement, The Walk, has some poignant dramatic power. Superb. Heath, by the same composer, is also a vibrantly colourful fresco, while Nico Muhly’s Liar Suite from the opera Marnie logically borrows from the Hitchcockian world of Bernard Herrmann, the director’s key musical collaborator, but with the addition of Muhly’s post-minimalist techniques.
The BBC Symphony under the affirmative direction of Timothy Redmont is splendid and invites music lovers fond of bewitching symphonism to a truly sonic feast.
