Composer: Jerome de Bromhead
Performer: Alan Smale
Orchestra: RTE National Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Colman Pearce
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Toccata
Catalogue: TOCC0422
Release: 2017
Size: 1.33 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. A Lay for a Light Year
Violin Concerto No. 1
02. I. Andante cantabile
03. II. Mesto
04. III. Vigoroso
Symphony No. 2
05. I. Quasi corrento
06. II. Quasi variazioni mesti
07. III. Quasi toccata
The vitality of these three works by the Irish composer Jerome de Bromhead (b. 1945) point to the sheer pleasure that their creator takes in writing music. The swirling ebullience of the tone-poem A Lay for a Light Year (2014) suggests the scale and energy of the cosmos. The edgy, elegiac lyricism of the Violin Concerto (2008) inhabits textures that are brittle and clear like Stravinsky’s. The more chromatic Second Symphony (1994) suggests a vast sense of space behind a glittering foreground of kaleidoscopic orchestral colours. A member of his family, Lt Gonville Bromhead, who fought in the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, was made famous when Michael Caine played the part of Lt Bromhead in the 1964 film Zulu.