Christian Lindberg (trombone)
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
British composer John Pickard has been widely praised for his architectural sense and bold handling of an extended tonal idiom. He is best known for a series of powerful orchestral works, of which The Flight of Icarus has met with particular acclaim. After its première at the PROMS The Times critic wrote: “Pickard's score remains airborne over its 20-minute span rather more proficiently than Icarus, leading the ear and imagination with impressive resourcefulness.”
“A real treat here from a
composer I hadn’t heard
before, John Pickard. His
soundscapes are often
rich and not a little
threatening, and there is
an almost Janá?ekian
sense of the inexorability
of nature. Had Icarus
heard this before
venturing too close to
the sun, he might have
shown more caution.” Gramophone Magazine
“John Pickard's music is vivid, frankly pictorial, and at its best virtuosically effective, in a style that never seems either self-consciously conservative or too stubbornly middle-of-the-road. The 20-minute orchestral piece The Flight of Icarus is the earliest work here - it was first performed in 1991 - and shows how Pickard can weave a convincing musical narrative out of a literary one, here the Greek myth of Icarus's fatal flight, on top of which are added references to the disasters that accompanied early space exploration. The Spindle of Necessity, from 1998, has a Greek source, too, using Plato's description of his model for the movements of the heavens as the basis for a trombone concerto that inevitably becomes a vehicle for Christian Lindberg's astonishing, extrovert bravura. The third piece here, Channel Firing (1993), seems to me the most personal and deeply felt of the three. Borrowing its title from a famous Hardy poem, it is a memorial to Pickard's teacher William Mathias, and is haunted by a doom-laden quotation from Wagner's Götterdämmerung.” The Guardian, 25th April 2008 ***
“Prompting a wonderfully direct, emotive elegy - all the more remarkable for a composer then just 27 … BIS's sound as always is first rate. I cannot recommend this highly enough.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2008
“Pickard is a born master of the orchestra, so BIS's imaginative decision to make this disc deserves high praise. A marvellous disc, urgently recommended.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2008 *****
Gramophone Magazine
