TurnageBenjaminRihm

COMPOSERS: TurnageBenjaminRihm
LABELS: Warner
ALBUM TITLE: TurnageBenjaminRihm
WORKS: Etudes & Elegies; Olicantus; Canzonas
PERFORMER: Michael Svoboda

La Monnaire SO/ Kazushi Ono
CATALOGUE NO: 2564 60244-2

George Benjamin’s suave and tubby



Olicantus, a 50th birthday tribute



to Oliver Knussen, is here mere



icing on an already stimulating issue



that contrasts Rihm, the leading



German Romantic modernist, with



Mark-Anthony Turnage, who begins



to seem a kind of post-modern



Romantic. Certainly the three works



that make up Etudes and Elegies



establish fairly clear connections



to genres, and indeed sonorities,



cultivated by Michael Tippett. If



A Quick Blast for wind, brass and



percussion brings echoes of the



Praeludium for brass and bells, and the



calmly ecstatic A Quiet Life for strings



makes best sense in the light of, say,



the Corelli Fantasia, it is the central,



full-orchestral panel, Uninterrupted



Sorrow, that evokes a whole range



of Tippett-like gestures, like a slow,



desolate sequence of ritual dances,



while impressively staking its claims



to some stark, seldom-trod region of



British musical landscape.



Against Turnage, Rihm sounds



the very model of a continental



Expressionist in his early, almost



arrogantly assured ‘orchestral



sketches’, Cuts and Dissolves, while



the much more recent Canzona



per sonare for alto trombone (a



wonderfully persuasive Michael



Svoboda) and two orchestral groups is



much more inclusive in its harmonic



palette and evocations of 17th-century



Venetian antiphony. I was startled by



the sheer colouristic range and beauty



of sound that Kazushi Ono draws



from the Monnaie orchestra: these



are all excellent performances,



stunningly well recorded, a fine



addition to both composers’



discographies. Calum MacDonald