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Jonathan Harvey Body Mandala Tranquil Abiding; Body Mandala; Timepieces: I - III; White as Jasmine; ...towards a Pure Land BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ilan Volkov &Stefan Solyom NMC D 141 Laurie Scott Baker and Robert Evans Musicnow MNCD010 Horses for courses... We need for Musical Pointers a reviewer attuned to the mystical and the minimal. Jonathan Harvey's latest CD brings together music which is all sonically attractive but presented dauntingly with explanations which I find unhelpful for listening, in the emphasis on religiosity, stressing how Harvey's Buddhist preoccupations intensify the sometimes mystical Christianity of earlier works (Michael Downes)... Ignore all that - but surely Harvey doesn't want you to - and you have however a rich assembly of orchestral tapestries of rich beauty. My own preference was for the complex Timepieces: I - III, which explore "how music can manipulate and trasform our perception of time". They require two conductors, each beating in different metres and tempi, and - to make things even harder - the musicians are at times instructed to transfer their attention from one conductor to another. Presentation is good and includes English texts of the songs (translations from Kannadu). No reason to doubt that the performances and their recording will be exactly what the composer wanted; the BBC Scottish Symhony Orchestra, based in Candelriggs, displays itself as a high class outfit which specialises in contemporary music. One curiosity is that this a packed disc totalling the maximum possible 79'59", necessitating a special note that you should have your zapper poised to create pauses between the works for 'the best listening experience' ! Liquid Metal Dreaming "ethereal, familiar, sometimes challenging" is based entirely on open strings and natural harmonics and recommended to people who like Adams, Riley, Oldfield, Skempton and Bedford, to which I would answer, well, some of Adams and Riley, but not most of the others. Laurie Scott Baker was a member of the historic Scratch Orchestra and involved with the English experimentalists and with Cornelius Cardew. I found the notes here more engrossing than the music, which sounds as if it may be improvised (no publishing information is supplied). It is mostly slow and introduces a wide array of percussion to counterpoint acoustic and bowed electric bass. Reports by afficionados of these musics, brought together here rather improbably - both would think - would be welcomed. Peter Grahame Woolf [Editor] |
