COMPOSERS: Skempton/Muldowney/Guy
LABELS: NMC
WORKS: Lento; Oboe Concerto;After the Rain
PERFORMER: Roy Carter (oboe); BBC SO/ Mark Wigglesworth, LSO/ Michael Tilson Thomas, City of London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox
CATALOGUE NO: NMCD 032 (1992-4)
This disc collects together three fairly recent British orchestral works already available on NMC singles. Howard Skempton’s Lento, a string-dominated, entirely triadic and moving ‘sequence of processionals’, could surely have achieved Górecki-like fame with the appropriate marketing. Dominic Muldowney’s Oboe Concerto and Barry Guy’s After the Rain make more sophisticated play with familiar materials: Guy using his expertise with string textures in the reworking of Renaissance polyphony; Muldowney, the musical conjurer extraordinary, reactivating melody and dramatic gesture with his cunning imagination at full stretch. Keith Potter
Skempton/Muldowney/Guy
This disc collects together three fairly recent British orchestral works already available on NMC singles. Howard Skempton’s Lento, a string-dominated, entirely triadic and moving ‘sequence of processionals’, could surely have achieved Górecki-like fame with the appropriate marketing.
Our rating
4
