Julian Anderson: Alhambra Fantasy

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Anderson's confidence in handling and shaping his musical material and his wonderfully precise ear for instrumental colour have been constants in his music… Oliver Knussen's beautifully integrated... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2006, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 7th Aug 2006
Catalogue No: ODE1012-2
Label: Ondine
Length: 76 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

27th October 2008
BBC Music Magazine

August 2006

Orchestral Choice
Gramophone Magazine

September 2006

Editor's Choice
Gramophone Awards

2007

Winner - Contemporary

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

British Music - up to 25% off

Special offer ends: 08/05/2024

Anderson, Julian: Khorovod

Work length13:01

$3.00

$3.85

London Sinfonietta
Oliver Knussen

Anderson, Julian: The Stations of the Sun

Work length18:28

$4.00

$5.15

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen

Anderson, Julian: The Crazed Moon

Work length13:28

$3.00

$3.85

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen

Anderson, Julian: Alhambra Fantasy

Work length11:25

$3.00

$3.85

London Sinfonietta
Oliver Knussen

Anderson, Julian: Diptych

Work length20:24

$5.00

$6.45

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oliver Knussen

I. Parades

Track length9:13

$2.00

$2.60

II. Pavillons en l' Air

Track length11:11

$3.00

$3.85

About
Reviews
Explore

About

World Premiere Recordings

Reviews

August 2006

Anderson's confidence in handling and shaping his musical material and his wonderfully precise ear for instrumental colour have been constants in his music… Oliver Knussen's beautifully integrated performances with both the BBC Symphony and the Sinfonietta help inestimably... and the detail in the recordings is always faithful to Anderson's fastidious sensibility.

2010

For more than a decade British composer Julian Anderson has been consolidating his reputation as a leading talent. This first CD shows that talent at full stretch. The music is always direct in its tone of voice and unfailingly approachable without turning its back on all contact with progressive modernism. It has the benefit here of superbly prepared and executed performances, recorded with fine responsiveness to instrumental colour and textural balance.
The earliest work, Diptych, is already formidably accomplished in its control of gradually intensifying formal design but it is in Khorovod, Anderson's first London Sinfonietta commission, that his feeling for balancing resonant harmonic densities and spontaneous melodic flow comes into its own. Anderson filters his admiration for such powerful contemporary presences as Per Nørgård and Tristan Murail through aspects of folk and popular music which are most immediately evident in the rhythmic and motivic profile of the piece. The result of such conjunctions could be mindlessly disparate but Anderson's knack for dramatising unexpected compatibilities makes for an enthralling structure of genuine substance, and this kind of process is replicated on the more ambitious scale of his 1998 Proms commission The Stations of the Sun, as well as in a second, no less rewarding Sinfonietta piece, Alhambra Fantasy.
The Stations of the Sun is complemented by TheCrazed Moon, written slightly earlier, whose much darker, dance-free character indicates that Anderson is well able to inhabit quite different emotional spheres with equal success.
With this release Ondine has made an impressive start to the Anderson discography; it is high time that Anderson was given his due.

September 2006

The music is always direct in its tone of voice and unfailingly approachable without turning its back on all contact with progressive modernism. It has the benefit here of superbly prepared and executed performances, recorded with fine responsiveness to instrument colour and textural balance.

Offer,Julian Anderson: Alhambra Fantasy

CD

Downloads

Contents

Download queue