Marin Alsop's recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra features three stylistically diverse contemporary works. James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, written in 1990, was his breakthrough piece, and remains one of his most frequently performed works. Thomas Adès' Chamber Symphony, written in the same year, likewise brought him into the public spotlight. Jennifer Higdon, on the other hand, wrote her Percussion Concerto well after she had secured a spot as one of the most promising American composers to ...
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Marin Alsop's recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra features three stylistically diverse contemporary works. James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, written in 1990, was his breakthrough piece, and remains one of his most frequently performed works. Thomas Adès' Chamber Symphony, written in the same year, likewise brought him into the public spotlight. Jennifer Higdon, on the other hand, wrote her Percussion Concerto well after she had secured a spot as one of the most promising American composers to emerge in the late twentieth century. The three works are striking in their dissimilarity. The MacMillan, which the composer describes as a requiem for a Scots martyr of the seventeenth century, is an emotionally expressionistic work with an anguished mood that eventually resolves into relative serenity. Adès' spare Chamber Symphony is colorful but abstractly modernist, with a detached, sometimes ironic, tone. The Percussion Concerto (of which this is the premiere recording) is more...
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