British composer Nicholas Sackman (born 1950) writes chamber music that draws on the full arsenal of contemporary techniques and employs them with a gestural and emotional directness that keeps them from seeming dauntingly modernist and makes them broadly appealing. Scorpio, a four-movement piece for percussion and piano, is one of his most attractive works. Sackman exploits both the rhythmic drive of the instruments and their broad palette of tonal colors. The slow movement, for vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, and piano ...
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British composer Nicholas Sackman (born 1950) writes chamber music that draws on the full arsenal of contemporary techniques and employs them with a gestural and emotional directness that keeps them from seeming dauntingly modernist and makes them broadly appealing. Scorpio, a four-movement piece for percussion and piano, is one of his most attractive works. Sackman exploits both the rhythmic drive of the instruments and their broad palette of tonal colors. The slow movement, for vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, and piano makes brilliant use of the timbral variety of the instruments and is especially effective. Cross hands is a virtuoso perpetuum mobile with sonorities that recall various Ligeti etudes. In Koi, for flute quartet, Sackman has the players double piccolos, alto flutes, and bass flutes, widening the range and the expressive possibilities of the ensemble, which he describes as being more difficult to write for than a string quartet. The piece is no watery, impressionistic depiction of the...
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