Hi Vandermolen,
(this was earlier in the" What are you listening to" section):
A couple of minutes ago on BBC 3 : James Mc Millan's viola concerto. Second time only (earlier this year it was performed & broadcast in the Netherlands). Loved it even better this time - the viola hisses as a angry cat , chirps as anxious birds ... sings like an angel!
From the Guardian:https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/19/manon-james-macmillan-viola-lawrence-power-review
....
Lasting nearly 40 minutes, this inventive, three-movement piece exploits fully the lyrical qualities of the instrument, launching with a rhapsodic solo ascent and finding bold colours via some hushed string harmonics, dissonances and glissandi. Bright sounds of harp, xylophone, vibraphone and tubular bells offset some more mellow string sounds, including those from the soloist's 400-year-old instrument.
At the start, after what sounds like a backward cadence (as if singing Amen in reverse), the viola floats over a murky, indistinct orchestral layer with almost imperceptible cross-rhythms, until interrupted by a sparky oboe and cor anglais. The second movement blasts to life with a vast, noisy clatter of percussion and full orchestra, out of which the songful viola emerges.
The work, a major contribution to the repertory, is full of musical debate, not least between the solo viola and the four front-desk players of the viola and cello section, but has little in the way of show-off virtuosity for its own sake. In an unexpected gesture, the soloist finishes fractionally ahead of everyone else after some spectacular, rapid string crossing, leaving his comrades to play two final chords. Counter to its ponderous image, the viola triumphantly proves its fleet-footed ability to gallop home first. James MacMillan has said he loved writing for the instrument and its player. Lawrence Power, in turn, looked as if he adored playing it. The cheers suggested everyone was of the same mind.
Or:
But violist Lawrence Power’s extraordinary championship of the gift James MacMillan has given him might well prove to be the solo performance of the year – and it’s only January. MacMillan is such a natural communicator and from the two simple chords ushering in Power’s rhapsodic opening solo the compulsion to go where he led was a given. For a Scottish Catholic the tone of this solo – indeed much of the solo part – was (as the serendipity of the pairing would have it) hauntingly Hebraic, almost as if Bloch’s Shelomo now had a son and heir. But it was MacMillan’s fantastic ear for orchestral sound that turned his largish orchestra into an environment in which his soloist could hold court and shine and always be heard. Pitting the gruffly assertive and astonishingly virtuosic pyrotechnics of the solo part against equally virtuosic tuned percussion was one way – chesty ardour offset by sparkling iridescence above. Another was through the soloist’s affecting alliance with pairs of violas and cellos or solo strings. Or simply by counterpointing the fast moving solo part with slow moving and highly characteristic plainchant in the wind.
MacMillan’s innate theatricality (he and Mahler both) made for a gripping slow movement where indomitable brass chords and the roar of tam-tam cleared the floor for the soloist’s rapt song. This most songful, hymn-like, writing incorporating the scoops and swoops and catches of an emotive vocalise eventually arrived at an unforgettable “evaporation” of the song in shortening phrases so high and so barely voiced as to sound like they were no longer emanating from the instrument at all.
From:http://www.edwardseckerson.biz/reviews/london-philharmonic-orchestra-power-jurowski-royal-festival-hall-review/
Afaik, no recording yet.
Peter
