Birtwistle: Slow Frieze/Antiphonies

A timely reminder that Birtwistle is no mere local hero: WDR Symphony Orchestra tackles the complexities of Antiphonies, while Windkraft Tirol deliver Panic with tremendous panache…Slow Frieze... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2015 More…

Release Date: 17th Jul 2015
Catalogue No: METCD1079
Label: Metronome

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Birtwistle: Antiphonies for Piano & Orchestra

first recording of revised version
Nicolas Hodges (piano)
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
Stefan Asbury

Birtwistle: Slow Frieze

first recording, supervised by the composer
Nicolas Hodges (piano)
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Martyn Brabbins

Birtwistle: Panic

Marcus Weiss (saxophone) & Christian Dierstein (percussion)
Windkraft Tirol
Kasper de Roo

Birtwistle: Crowd

first recording, supervised by the composer
Antonia Schreiber (harp)

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About

Harrison Birtwistle celebrated his 80th birthday in 2014, and has for many years been lauded as one of Britain’s greatest composers, perhaps the greatest since Purcell. This recording contains major works from the 1990s - Antiphonies, Slow Frieze and Panic - with Crowd, a solo harp work written in 2005, as an epilogue. My first performance of Antiphonies, with BBC Scottish SO and Martyn Brabbins in 1999, marked the first time Harry and I worked closely together. I had also heard the first performance of Slow Frieze, and it was clear to me that the two works should be presented together. Since these recordings were made, my working relationship with Harry has continued with the premieres of two new solo works, the Gigue Machine (2011), and Variations from the Golden Mountain (2014). The collaboration is, happily, ongoing.

Reviews

December 2015

A timely reminder that Birtwistle is no mere local hero: WDR Symphony Orchestra tackles the complexities of Antiphonies, while Windkraft Tirol deliver Panic with tremendous panache…Slow Frieze [is] a superb premiere recording by the BCMG…Crowd, Birtwistle's only work for solo harp, is a tour de force of fearless questioning in an atmosphere of aqueous luminescence

October 2015

Antiphonies…projects a large-scale drama which veers between dance and dirge…all three performances are as well characterised in their teeming details as they are assured in overall formal precision…the music in this spellbinding performance still comes across as a celebratory lament.

12th August 2015

it is the recording of Antiphonies...that provides the biggest revelation here...The score was revised in 2005 and that is the version that Nicolas Hodges plays here, the revision making it more structurally convincing, and intensely, involvingly dramatic than I’ve ever heard it before, turning the climactic manic section – a Boulez-like toccata – into a virtuoso tour de force.

Classical Music December 2015

The ever-impressive Hodges is commanding in Antiphonies, more assured than Joanna MacGregor, and its pairing with Slow Frieze makes perfect sense…harpist Antonia Schreiber is excellent in the sparse, brooding Crowd.

Birtwistle: Slow Frieze/Antiphonies

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