Halle; Colin Currie; Chloe Hanslip; Nicholas Collon
Release Date: 24 March 2017
Label: NMC Recordings
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5023363021821
Genres: Classical Contemporary
Description
This fourth, full-length album of music by multi award-winning composer Simon Holt on NMC showcases his highly narrative orchestral compositions. His violin concerto witness to a snow miracle – here performed by the prodigiously talented Chloë Hanslip – depicts the story of the life, and particularly gruesome death, of St Eulalia of Merida. From the initial, frenzied cadenza in the solo violin we get a sense of the torment and horror the saint suffered at the hands of the Romans: her flesh torn with hooks, flames applied to the wounds, and her body buried in hot coals. A blanket of snow fell on her ashes, at which point she was declared a saint.
Holt's other award-winning concerto on this album is a much more upbeat and quirky affair. Written for and performed on this recording by one of the world's finest percussionists, Colin Currie, a table of noises introduces us to Holt's taxidermist great uncle Ashworth, a kind of maverick scientist-cum-collector. Currie says "this percussion concerto exuberantly tears up the manual on how to approach the medium and I am thrilled with the idiosyncratic, adventurous results". The soloist is seated on a cajon (a box-shaped instrument often used in flamenco), and apart from the xylophone and glockenspiel, all the other instruments are laid out on a table in front of the soloist; hence the title. Each brief movement has a descriptive title (eg. a drawer full of eyes (discovered by Holt's mother in Ash's bedroom tallboy and Skennin' Mary (a neighbour with a glass eye that spun when she became angry) and is linked by five "ghost" orchestral interludes.
The short, dazzling, orchestral work St Vitus in the kettle was commissioned by BBC National Orchestra of Wales during Holt's tenure as Composer-in-Association (2008-2014). The grisly end for this saint was a cauldron of boiling hot lead!
Tracklisting
Lisa Illean, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, GBSR Duo, Juliet Fraser, Explore Ensemble
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, Andrew Davis
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, London Sinfonietta, Ryan Wigglesworth, Huw Watkins
Richard Baker
Mark Padmore, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta
Zubin Kanga
Thomas Simaku, soloists of Ensemble Intercontemporain
Onyx Brass
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Tomasz Stanko Quartet
Jiem
Ant Law & Brigitte Beraha
Tom Green Septet
Patchwork Jazz Orchestra
Elaine Delmar
Ross McHenry
