Scottish composer James MacMillan wrote his orchestral piece, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, early in his career, and while it was one of the works that established his international reputation and remains one of his most recorded pieces, the variety of music he's written and his vastly expanded expressive range make it seem like a relatively minor work -- skillfully executed, with interesting ideas, but less compelling than much of what he's written since then. It's an example of the composer's penchant for addressing ...
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Scottish composer James MacMillan wrote his orchestral piece, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, early in his career, and while it was one of the works that established his international reputation and remains one of his most recorded pieces, the variety of music he's written and his vastly expanded expressive range make it seem like a relatively minor work -- skillfully executed, with interesting ideas, but less compelling than much of what he's written since then. It's an example of the composer's penchant for addressing disturbing, often gruesome topics with the stated goal of offering a redemptive response to them; in this case MacMillan wrote the piece as a kind of requiem for a seventeenth century Scottish woman executed for witchcraft. This is one piece that would have benefited from a title that didn't attach such a sensationalistic program to it -- it's more effective as abstract music than as an evocation of the imagery that Isobel Gowdie's frightful story inevitably stirs up in the listener....
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