Divine Art announces third album for composer Robin Stevens

Posted by Divine Art Recordings Group on

21 January, 2021

British composer Robin Stevens (b. 1958) is embarking on a recording of his music for cello and piano, to be recorded in the first three months of 2021. The performers are Nicholas Trygstad, lead cellist of the Manchester-based Hallé Orchestra (with whom he recently played the Elgar Cello Concerto), and David Jones, Head of Keyboard Accompaniment at the Royal Northern College of Music, also in Manchester, who made a superb pianistic contribution to Robin’s 2020 CD of wind music, Prevailing Winds. The largest piece on the album will be the expansive, single-movement Sonata Romantica, a predominantly lyrical composition which also incorporates expressive use of microtones, including in particular, and rather unusually, thirds of a tone. Most of the remainder of the disc comprises shorter pieces in Robin’s personal brand of accessible Modernism: here the composer’s intimate knowledge of the cello (he is himself a music-college-trained cellist) comes to the fore in miniatures of considerable power and originality. By way of contrast, the set will also showcase the lighter side of Robin’s output in his tuneful Balmoral Suite, five movements portraying different members of the royal family, including an affectionate depiction of Prince Philip in his centenary year. The album is due to be released in the Autumn of 2021.