Borut Krzisnik A Life in Suitcases

A disturbing CD which really needs to be heard in its visual context of Greenaway's film trilogy to do composer Borut Krzisnik fair justice.

The music is arresting and powerful and only after several tracks did I discover, to some surprise, that Krzisnik is a technological wizard in sole charge of his own "virtual orchestra"! He is a Slovenian composer who has been featured on Unknown Public, and creates and performs orchestral music from digitally recorded sounds of real instruments.

Obvious derivations are the American minimalists and Stravinsky, but not overmuch so. Without film one might hope that the harmonic and melodic changes came a little more quickly, but several of the tracks do hold the attention - certainly at first hearing.

Indications are that Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003) will be worth catching if it appears in due course on DVD. Meanwhile, defenders of the Symphony Orchestra may become a little uneasy with technology's unceasing development.

See: http://www.firstname.org.uk/
and http://www2.arnes.si/%7Eksbkrzi/index.html