English composer Sally Beamish wrote the three pieces recorded here while she was composer-in-residence with the Swedish and Scottish chamber orchestras. It's not surprising, then, that they all have distinctly icy, wintry moods. Whitescape, a sketch for an opera based on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, explicitly conjures images of the arctic tundra where Dr. Frankenstein has traveled in search of his monster. It's highly effective in its evocation of a bleak, frozen landscape. Sangsters, a three-movement tone ...
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English composer Sally Beamish wrote the three pieces recorded here while she was composer-in-residence with the Swedish and Scottish chamber orchestras. It's not surprising, then, that they all have distinctly icy, wintry moods. Whitescape, a sketch for an opera based on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, explicitly conjures images of the arctic tundra where Dr. Frankenstein has traveled in search of his monster. It's highly effective in its evocation of a bleak, frozen landscape. Sangsters, a three-movement tone poem suggested by the Scots poetry of Betty McKellar, depicts a craggy and similarly chilly terrain. The Seafarer, Beamish's second concerto for viola, was written in memory of conductor David Shallon, the husband of Tabea Zimmermann, the soloist. Like Sangsters, it takes poetry as its inspiration, in this case a tenth century Anglo-Saxon text that uses the sea voyage as a metaphor for the passages of life. Here again the imagery is dark and icy, with a glimmer of hope at the end....
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