Colin Currie

“MacMillan's is a strikingly expansive view of his own piece, textures lightened, with a feeling of chamber music-making in many places...It's an absorbing spiritual rendition, and I prefer it to its more explicitly virtuosic predecessors.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ****

“[Nikolic] renders electric MacMillan's extraordinary, bleak-sounding Eastern European gypsy strains, building them to a skin-prickling climax of virtuosic frenzy. Meanwhile, the orchestra gives a performance so highly charged you'll be rushing for the programme notes to search for the spiritual meaning behind the piece.” bbc.co.uk, 19th July 2012

“Veni, Veni gives the lie to the argument that percussion concertos are dependent on visual impact. MacMillan’s is an aural blockbuster, and Colin Currie, the soloist, dazzles with his dexterity and musical imagination.” Financial Times, 27th July 2012 ****

“Nikolitch is the potent violinist in his expressions of Shostakovich-like apprehension and the orchestra paints an unnerving backdrop of darkness and flickers of light. [Veni, veni] sounds as wonderfully fresh, imaginative, rhythmically impulsive and vibrantly colourful as it did all those years ago at its Proms premiere.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2012

“What you miss is the visual element – being able to see the remarkable Colin Currie rapidly switching between marimba, timps, gongs and cowbells. Challenge Classics's production is handsomely done though – listen through a pair of decent headphones and you can visualise exactly what’s going on...It’s a wonderful piece, and this is a definitive performance.” The Arts Desk, 6th October 2012

“A late and lush harvest of works by octogenarian Einojuhani Rautavaara continues apace. Here we have eagerly awaited documentation of his two latest neo-Romantic concertos, in beautifully recorded and definitive performances by the soloists who are their dedicatees.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2012 ****

“John Storgards and the Helsinki Philharmonic lay down a basic sound of Axminster luxury throughout the disc” International Record Review, May 2012

“…it's… reassuring to hear a disc like this which presents new music with such conviction. This detailed, thoughtful music, mature in conception, confident in execution and impeccably recorded, is well worth your time.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 ****

“[Currie is] inspired, and is very well supported by the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“Whistles and whoops greeted this invigorating première.” The Telegraph, December 2007 (on the Higdon)

“Exciting music, excitingly performed; from Alsop you expect nothing else.” The Times, February 2007 (on the MacMillan)

“…a moving, compelling performance, and coupled with strong accounts of the phenomenal Adès Chamber Symphony… and Jennifer Higdon's essentially old-fashioned but well-wrought Percussion Concerto, this disc would make an excellent present for an open-minded new music agnostic.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 *****

“Vivid accounts of visceral, career-launching contemporary works. Where Adès intrigues listeners, James MacMillan fairly bludgeons them into submission with The Confession of Isobel Gowdie… Marin Alsop, moreover, has its measure far more than Sir Colin Davis, while the LPO give everything in an account that should convince those hearing the piece for the first time.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2009

“Not the least notable aspects of this CD are the two works, both dating from 1990, that launched their composers' careers. In Thomas Adès's Chamber Symphony, an often oblique musical syntax binds fragmentary ideas and textures into a cumulative whole; its motifs moving purposefully through a 'slow movement' and 'scherzo' before finding repose in an exquisite coda. All the more pity, then, that this vivid but fallible reading does not quite match that by the composer.
Where Adès intrigues listeners, James Mac- Millan fairly bludgeons them into submission with The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, though this depiction of a 17th-century Scottish woman tortured then burnt at the stake for witchcraft could hardly afford to be self-effacing. And the initial accumulation of intensity, spilling over into an extended onslaught then recalling the opening in expressively heightened terms before the accusatory final crescendo, is nothing if not powerful. Marin Alsop has its measure, while the LPO give everything in an account that should convince those hearing the piece for the first time.
Jennifer Higdon's Percussion Concerto (2005) might also be found engaging on first hearing.
The solo part, dispatched with aplomb by Colin Currie, is disappointingly limited in its invention and rhythmic profile, while the orchestral part – a mild distillation of Stravinskian and Coplandesque gestures – is unlikely to set the pulse racing. The sound and booklet are on a par with earlier LPO releases, however, making this disc well worth investigating for the Mac- Millan alone.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010