This release of premiere recordings by composer Adam Gorb features some leading musicians working in the UK, including clarinettist Paul Vowles and the pianists Graham Scott and Simon Parkin. Gorb is a major figure in the contemporary ‘Manchester composers’ school and has had works released by NMC, Prima Facie and Naxos.
Adam Gorb, born (1958) in Cardiff, was composing actively at the age of 10: his first work broadcast on national radio written when he was 15. His works have been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. Notable pieces include Metropolis for wind band (1992), which has won several prizes including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. Kol Simcha, a ballet given over 50 performances by the Rambert Dance Company and Awayday (1996) for wind band which, along with Yiddish Dances, (1998) also for wind band have had thousands of performances world-wide, and many commercial recordings. More recently works have included the String Quartet No. 1 for the Maggini Quartet, which was premiered at Bromsgrove in February 2002, and Towards Nirvana, which received its first performance by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble in October 2002, winning a British Composer Award in the in the Wind and Brass ensemble category in 2004.
The works on this album include Reconciliation (1997) which was commissioned by the Park Lane Group for their flagship Young Artist series at London’s Southbank Centre. It is a set of eight variations grouped roughly into a compressed four-movement symphonic shape with the scherzo third, and a concluding epilogue. The Sonata for Violin and Piano (1996) is one of the key works in Gorb’s output to date, the writing for both instruments is idiomatic and masterly, the handling of material fluid, eloquent and nuanced.
