Anderson, Julian: Four American Choruses

November 2006

****

“The dazzling Book of Hours, composed for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, is one of Anderson's greatest achievements so far, building from the simplest beginning - the first four notes of a major scale - into a wonderfully rich study of thematic transformation and texture, coloured by digitally synthesised haloes of the instrumental sounds.”

2010

“This, the magnificent follow-up to the Ondine Julian Anderson disc (see above), contains the five works he wrote for Birmingham forces during his years as CBSO composer-in-association (2001-5). The recordings were made at different times in different places but the strongest impression is of a group of compositions exploring closely related ideas and beliefs.
The opening of the Symphony is emblematic, evolving from attenuated noises to the trills, arabesques and fanfares of a pastoral dawnmusic.
You might pick up hints of Tippett's Ritual Dances, Nicholas Maw's Odyssey, even of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé.
But the music never falls back on simple imitation, and while it seems to share Tippett's modern construction of Utopia – of aspiration inseparable from uncertainty and doubt – the subtle intricacy of Anderson's approach to harmony, and to the interplay between tempered and non-tempered tunings, reinforces its strongly personal, authentically contemporary quality. Similar images are powerfully projected at the end of Book of Hours for instrumental ensemble and live electronics, when an artless, folklike tune is challenged by much darker, denser materials, and again in the shorter orchestral works Eden and Imagin'd Corners. In all these scores the luminous yet abrasive resonance of the textures counters the risks of oldstyle pastoral complacency.
As John Fallas's well-informed notes point out, Anderson's is not an escapist vision of Utopia.
Hope is always 'uncertain', and in the FourAmerican Choruses, setting verses from Ira Sankey's evangelical hymns collection, the music seems to question as much as to endorse the simple religious sentiments of the texts.
Even if these works receive more polished performances in future years, the present recordings are all special in the imagination and excitement they convey.”

November 2006

“This, the magnificent follow-up to the recent Ondine Julian Anderson… contains the five works he wrote for Birmingham forces during his years as CBSO composer-in-association (2001-5). The opening of the Symphony is emblematic, evolving from attenuated noises to the trills, arabesques and fanfares of a pastoral dawn-music. ...the subtle intricacy of Anderson's approach to harmony, and to the interplay between tempered and non-tempered tunings, reinforces its strongly personal, authentically contemporary quality. Similar images are powerfully projected at the end of Book of Hours for instrumental ensemble and live electronics, when an artless, folklike tune is challenged by much darker, denser materials, and again in the shorter orchestral works Eden and Imagin'd Corners. In all these scores the luminous yet abrasive resonance of the textures counters the risks of old-style pastoral complacency. Even if these works receive more polished performances in future years, the present recordings are all special in the imagination and excitement they convey.”