The first full-length disc from highly-acclaimed young composer David Sawer, featuring scintillating orchestral score the greatest happiness principle, ensemble works Tiroirs and The Memory of Water, and a specially-arranged orchestral suite taken from Sawer’s opera From Morning to Midnight, heard here for the first time.
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Martyn Brabbins conductor
Susanna Malkki conductor
AUDIO
REVIEWS
'Though the most substantial work in this collection is the 'symphonic' suite that the composer extracted from his opera, From Morning to Midnight, ... the other pieces, all from the late 1990s, show the unfailing originality and distinctiveness of everything David Sawer composes. The chamber orchestral Tiroirs is a sequence of razor-sharp images, each perfectly scored and imagined, and shuffled with a conjuror's virtuosity; The Memory of Water, for string orchestra and a pair of solo violins whose spatial relationship steadily shifts through the course of the piece, is a compelling musical flux that Sawer likens to a flowing river from which ideas emerge only to be submerged again.' The Guardian
‘This is tremendous fun, as well as a testament to Sawer’s imagination’ Fanfare
'Sawer skilfully encapsulates the wide dramatic range of his opera From Morning to Midnight in this half-hour orchestral suite' Gramophone
FUNDERS
Produced in association with BBC Radio 3
RECORDING CREDITS
From Morning to Midnight/ the greatest happiness principle:
Recording date: 19-21 September 2005
Recording venue: BBC Studio 1, Maida Vale, London
Engineer: Neil Pemberton
Producer: Ann McKay
Tiroirs/ Memory of Water:
Recording date: 6 March 2005, 12 February 2006
Recording venue: CBSO Centre and Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham
Engineer: Mike Clements
Producer: Andrew Walton
(P) 2007 NMC Recordings Ltd