Composer: Colin McPhee
Orchestra: Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Dennis Russell Davies
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: MusicMasters
Catalogue: 01612-67159-2
Release: 1996
Size: 177 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Symphony No. 2, Moderato Misterioso
01. Moderato Misterioso
02. Elegy
03. Molto Energico
Concerto For Piano With Wind Octette
04. Allegretto
05. Chorale
06. Coda
07. Nocturne For Chamber Orchestra
Balinese Ceremonial Music
08. Pemoengkah
09. Gambangan
10. Toboeh Teloe
An indispensable album for all lovers of North American music: and in particular, repetitive and minimalist music. Dennis Russell Davies invites us to discover an essential figure from the early 20th Century: Colin McPhee, born in Montreal in 1900, he died in 1964 in Los Angeles. A great friend of Britten and Pears, with whom he lived at the end of the 1930s when the two Brits visited the US. Colin McPhee’s oeuvre is limited, with many unfinished works, but it offers a window on the musics of the far east, and in particular for the music of Bali, anticipating the future works of Steve Reich and John Adams in its rhythmic, cyclical motifs. While Tabuh-Tabuhan remains his most significant work (1936), it is missing from the programme listing here but not from Russell Davies’s discography (for the label Argo). His later works from the 1950s collected here confirm McPhee’s true singularity, starting with his Nocturne. Fascinating – literally.