Music for a New Century Tan Dun: Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra with Percussion; Philip Glass: Piano Concerto No. 3; Jake Heggie: Overture; Mark-Anthony Turnage: Lament Alexey Botvinov (piano); New Century Chamber Orchestra/Daniel Hope (violin) DG 486 4128 72:26 mins
The arpeggiated figures and broken chords of Glass’s Third Piano Concerto (2017) are repeated – endlessly, it seems – until the final movement, where a darker tone seeps into the sparse motivic development, giving a nod to a minimalist of a different stripe, Arvo Pärt. The work was originally written for Simone Dinnerstein and a consortium of orchestras including the New Century Chamber Orchestra, which reprises its role here with Alexey Botvinov.
The remaining works – all premiere recordings – are far more interesting, and together form an engaging snapshot of the disparate worlds within contemporary music. Violinist Daniel Hope and Botvinov move between creeping staccato phrases and expansive melodies in Tan Dun’s Double Concerto; there is a hint of pentatonic harmony in the reoccurring Chinese-inspired theme, which eventually explodes amid percussive fireworks. The light-heartedness immediately disappears with Turnage’s yearning Lament, made unbearably beautiful by Hope’s exquisite tonal quality (think 21st-century Lark Ascending). Heggie’s Overture ends the collection with an upbeat, quasi-Baroque overture, in which ensemble and Hope revel in the occasional bursts of abstract contrapuntalism.
Claire Jackson