Reviews

Quotation, suggestion, and stylistic interplay assume significant roles in these works, and their placement and manipulation take the listener down fascinating and unexpected paths. Elliott Schwartz is a composer in possession of great craft and a deep love of the Western canon. While his employment of quotation and stylistic references adds a rich layer of potential meaning to his works, one does not need to share Schwartz’s connections in order to experience and enjoy his dramatic gestures and stylistic interplay on their own terms. Tapestry presents works of great emotional weight and subtle textural exploration worth discovering in relation to one’s own previous musical memory.

In every composition, the beauty and terror of spontaneity are pitted in some way against the nostalgia of familiarity and expectation. Schwartz’s quartet is an extravagantly chimerical but soulful journey that, from beginning to end, offers a rich feast for the ears of any thoughtful and attentive listener. Violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved and pianist Aaron Shorr are both impressive in their technical and interpretive command of the virtuosity and emotional range—from the explosive to the gently nuanced—demanded by [Memorial in Two Parts]. The quality of sound is clear, clean and appropriately resonant.

Elliott Schwartz’s music reveals a well-stocked mind fully alert to musical and non-musical art forms alike. Schwartz’s is certainly an individual voice.

Carson Cooman is a remarkably prolific composer with a deep well of creativity. Trumpeter Chris Gekker is heard on several of the works and that’s a real plus.

The present collection of works broadens our vision of [Cooman’s] musical personality considerably. All the works presented have genuine substance. The performances are excellent, the works memorable and well put-together, and the sequence of works quite pleasing. This is a winner. It serves as an admirable introduction to the composer in a chamber mode. And for the brass-a-holics out there it is something you must not miss. Kudos!

The disc opens strongly with the song cycle Chasing the Moon Down. The texts are skilfully crafted, the images and allusions highly effective, and they have called forth music worthy of them, in tonal language highly reminiscent of Samuel Barber at his best. This composition is a genuine masterpiece – no other word will do. [Katarzyna Sadej has] a stunningly rich, beautiful voice. The production values are high… all the participating artists give fine performances. Cooman is clearly not just a talented composer but a genuinely gifted one.

This is fascinating and fun. The result is entirely convincing. The transformation (in the Quintettsatz) is masterly and utterly compelling, as are performance of both works from the Kreutzer Quartet and Roderick Chadwick. Strongly recommended. Performance ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Recording ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This disc reveals another side of Finnissy. His Grieg-Quintettsatz is a compassionately composed love letter in sound to Edvard Grieg written shortly after his stylistically faithful completion of the Piano Quintet. The Kreutzer Quartet and Roderick Chadwick play the game, an authentic mode of 19th century expression and refuses to acknowledge its genuine fakeness. Attention-grabbing.

Karl Fiorini’s works illustrate this aesthetic where recent artistic developments are integrated with more traditional sources of inspiration and moulded to the composer’s own unique expression. Fiorini’s first CD is a welcome addition to the collectors of classical and contemporary music.

Be prepared to find yourself challenged with music alternating between dissonance and tonal progressions. Both soloists play their edgy, demanding works with pyrotechnic ease

A well-attested tradition of Atlantic culture sweeps down from the North Cape of Norway to Gibraltar, taking in Nordic and Celtic elements along the way and reaching out towards the pelagic islands and the Eastern seaboard of North America. At the lower limit of its reach, it makes contact with a Mediterranean culture that is […]

Thomas Fortmann is revealed here as a skilful and intuitive chamber music composer. His language is often old-fashioned, but his sense for timbral blending and his playfully neo-Baroque construction have a timeless appeal. Clever, elegant and compelling, which is a good general description of Thomas Fortmann’s work in general.

Fortmann shares the rock musician’s fondness for a generally in-your-face rather than subtle approach and cheeringly, an unstoppable sense of momentum. His style is wildly eclectic … his music is an invigorating listen and may wear well. Players all make stylish and unflagging contributions.

This is fascinating. Fortmann, unlike some of his peers, seems to have entered into the arena of contemporary classical music successfully. All credit to the performers, who exude concentration throughout,. Padovani is a fine violinist. Fortmann’s style: poppy and full of surprises: pepper and sugar.

[Fortmann’s] chamber music is of interest regardless of whether we knew his music before or not…. a very palpable sense of structure conjoined with an artist’s attention to emotive power. The performances are quite fine. Thomas Fortmann has a vivid, inventive soul. Bravo and encore!

Fortmann has achieved a distinctly personal style. Twelve tone music rubs shoulders with cranky ragtime rhythms.. [The Violin Sonata] is a succinct and curious but fun composition. The Four Pieces for Two Violins … again combine jazziness with the twelvetone process. The performance is impeccable and captures the entire flavour. [Piano Trio Prolitheus] is a very eclectic work and quite a forceful and emotional one. I greatly admire the energy, both musical and intellectual, that [Fortmann] has put into [his music]; even more so the commitment and panache of the performers involved.

Fortmann’s strength as a composer comes out – his is certainly an unusual approach – and a somewhat refreshing one. A certain optimism and joy shines through. It’s worth hearing.

Throughout both of these discs, performances are as committed and attentive to the music’s frequently understated demands as might be expected from ensembles of the calibre of the New Music Players and New Music Vocal Ensemble. Special mention must be made of Richard Casey, who, besides writing most of the detailed and informative booklet notes, proves no less adept and sympathetic as a pianist. The recordings, though made over more than a decade, fully convey this music’s clarity and intricacy, making for a release that can be warmly recommended for its persuasive overview of a composer for whom a wider reputation ought not be long in coming.

Hughes’s music is most notable for its variability in dissonance. He is able to move seamlessly from what sounds completely atonal to triadic harmony that allows for accessible expression. Orchids alone makes the record worthwhile, and this two-disc set makes it easy to acquire a variety of music by a British composer from whom we can surely expect more high quality work to come.

Many of [Hughes’s] scores for reduced forces are no less striking and engaging [than his large-scale canvases), as evidence by the various pieces in Metier’s anthology. Evident gift for polyphonic texture. An inspiring, thoughtfully compiled programme. Ed Hughes lays down considerable challenges to performers and they are met here with virtuosity and imagination in ideal readings, polished and alert, which it is difficult to imagine being surpassed.. Consistently fine sound. This is a valuable survey of a composer whose unorthodox and resourceful music deservers to be better know.