Ryan Wigglesworth reviews

In a back-handed way, it says something about Vaughan Williams’s range as a composer that two of his symphonies, played by the same fine orchestra in the same hall, can fare so differently in the hands of two different conductors. Ryan Wigglesworth’s approach to the tumultuous Fourth is detached seemingly to the point of coldness: the expressive reins are kept ultra-tight, with ruthlessly fast tempos in the quick movements, drawing virtuoso brilliance from the LPO in an artistically miscued cause.

Birtwistle may be a musical bogeyman for some, but these are among the most powerful orchestral pieces of recent years. Both The Shadow of Night and Night’s Black Bird are related to Dürer’s engraving Melencolia 1, which inspired a work with that title in the mid 1970s. Each of them, too, is musically underpinned by a song by that master of melancholy, John Dowland.

This penultimate release in the London Sinfonietta’s excellent Jerwood Series features works drawing inspiration from beyond the normal Classical sphere, ‘crossover’ if you like, though certainly not in the way used by bean counters at major labels.