{"id":7886,"date":"2017-06-11T11:25:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T10:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=7886"},"modified":"2017-09-11T11:38:26","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T10:38:26","slug":"five-stars-for-an-eventful-morning-in-london-from-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2017\/06\/11\/five-stars-for-an-eventful-morning-in-london-from-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"FIVE STARS FOR AN EVENTFUL MORNING IN LONDON FROM THE TIMES"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wonderful new FIVE STAR review in The Times for An Eventful Morning in East London: 21st C. Violin Concertos with\u00a0Harriet Mackenzie<\/a>;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Get your copy:\u00a0https:\/\/eso.co.uk\/\u2026\/an-eventful-morning-in-east-london-21st\u2026\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMackenzie\u2019s playing is rivetingly incisive throughout, and Kenneth Woods, conductor obtains exemplary accompaniments from the English String Orchestra and English Symphony Orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n

Classical review: Harriet Mackenzie: An Eventful Morning in East London<\/p>\n

The violinist\u2019s playing is rivetingly incisive throughout this recording of five 21st-century concertos
\nRichard Morrison
\nJune 9 2017, 12:01am, The Times<\/p>\n

Harriet Mackenzie shows her zest for adventure in this ambitious album<\/p>\n

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\nThe recording\u2019s title is a tease. An Eventful Morning in East London is the name (almost) of\u00a0Rob Fokkens<\/a>\u2019s violin concerto, one of five 21st-century concertos played by the indefatigably adventurous violinist Harriet Mackenzie on this superb release. However, although Mackenzie is a Londoner, Fokkens is South African. So his East London,in the Eastern Cape, is 6,000 miles south of Shoreditch.<\/p>\n

His concerto reflects it too. Fokkens has Charles Ives\u2019s ability to enrich his own imaginatively orchestrated style with \u201cfound\u201d music \u2014 in this case an outdoor African soundscape that seems to incorporate a passing funeral procession replete with snatches of Dies Irae as well as a jazz band.<\/p>\n

That makes for a fascinating 13 minutes. Yet it\u2019s just one highlight on an album mixing the work of two older composers \u2014 Paul Patterson and\u00a0David Matthews (composer)<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 working in a generally tonal idiom with the quirky new generation, represented by Fokkens,\u00a0Emily Doolittle<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Deborah Pritchard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What unites them is an ability to create something fresh out of existing material. Pritchard\u2019s Wall of Water, for instance, is a response to a series of Maggi Hambling paintings. I\u2019m glad they aren\u2019t reproduced in the accompanying brochure, because Pritchard\u2019s music \u2014 growing out of a tiny, semitonal twist cloaked in otherworldly harmonics \u2014 paints its own pictures in the imagination. It is profusely atmospheric and virtuosically challenging, and it rises to an intense cadenza (a bit too arpeggio-dependent, perhaps) before imploding to where it started.<\/p>\n

Doolittle\u2019s falling still has a similar atmospheric quality. The violin, representing a bird in flight, hovers over slow, lush string-clusters representing more inanimate sounds of nature. That suggests a latter-day Lark Ascending, but Doolittle\u2019s style is far more astringent than Vaughan Williams and has a more elegiac hue.<\/p>\n

So does Matthews\u2019s Romanza, which, despite its name, is a curiously unsettling piece in which the soloist moves from moodily impressionistic rhapsody to enigmatic Viennese waltz, where the balance between pastiche and irony is never quite fixed. To me it spoke of youthful joys recollected into ruefulness, if not despair.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Patterson\u2019s Allusions for two solo violins and strings (Philippa Mo<\/a>\u00a0is the other excellent protagonist) is pure pleasure, three movements each riffing on a different operatic character. The first, brilliantly energetic and manically contrapuntal, alludes to Falstaff and his tangled love life. The second, called Mindscape, refers to Don Giovanni\u2019s encounter with the Commendatore, with the music rising from dark rumination to nightmarish crisis. And the third is a glorious postmodern riff on Mozart\u2019s Marriage of Figaro overture, full of dizzy syncopations.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie\u2019s playing is rivetingly incisive throughout, and\u00a0Kenneth Woods, conductor<\/a>\u00a0obtains exemplary accompaniments from the English String Orchestra and English Symphony Orchestra.
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