Simon Holt: a table of noises

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quick-witted and haunting. Colin Currie is the soloist in this affectionate and entertaining work, while Nicholas Collon conducts the Hallé — Financial Times, 31st March 2017 More…

Release Date: 24th Mar 2017
Catalogue No: NMCD218
Label: NMC
Length: 56 minutes

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Holt, Simon: A Table of Noises

Work length30:02

$10.00

$13.00

$17.50

Colin Currie
Hallé Orchestra
Nicholas Collon

I. Jute

Track length5:59

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$1.75

Ghost I

Track length3:29

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II. Fly

Track length0:37

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Ghost II

Track length3:35

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III. A Drawer Full of Eyes

Track length1:03

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Ghost III

Track length2:38

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IV. Skennin' Mary

Track length0:57

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Ghost IV

Track length4:11

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V. Table Top - Ghost V

Track length1:31

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VI. Under Glass

Track length6:02

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Holt, Simon: St. Vitus in the Kettle

Work length3:41

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Hallé Orchestra
Nicholas Collon
Recorded: 29 July 2014
Recording Venue: Hallé St Peter's, Ancoats, Manchester

Holt, Simon: witness to a snow miracle

Work length23:15

$7.00

$9.10

$12.25

Chloë Hanslip
Hallé Orchestra
Nicholas Collon
Recorded: 9 November 2015
Recording Venue: Hallé St Peter's, Ancoats, Manchester

I. Eulalia of Merida

Track length2:05

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II. The Tearing, the Burning

Track length3:17

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III. Flames Become Birds

Track length3:26

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IV. Snowfall on Ashes

Track length4:17

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V. Witness

Track length3:12

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VI. Torments

Track length3:10

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VII. Halo

Track length3:48

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$1.75

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This fourth, full-length album of music by multi award-winning composer Simon Holt on NMC showcases his highly narrative orchestral compositions. His violin concerto witness to a snow miracle – here performed by the prodigiously talented Chloë Hanslip – depicts the story of the life, and particularly gruesome death, of St Eulalia of Merida. From the initial, frenzied cadenza in the solo violin we get a sense of the torment and horror the saint suffered at the hands of the Romans: her flesh torn with hooks, fl ames applied to the wounds, and her body buried in hot coals. A blanket of snow fell on her ashes, at which point she was declared a saint. Holt's other award-winning concerto on this album is a much more upbeat and quirky affair. Written for and performed on this recording by one of the world's fi nest percussionists, Colin Currie, a table of noises introduces us to Holt's taxidermist great uncle Ashworth, a kind of maverick scientist-cum-collector. Currie says "this percussion concerto exuberantly tears up the manual on how to approach the medium and I am thrilled with the idiosyncratic, adventurous results". The soloist is seated on a cajon (a box-shaped instrument often used in fl amenco), and apart from the xylophone and glockenspiel, all the other instruments are laid out on a table in front of the soloist; hence the title. Each brief movement has a descriptive title (eg. a drawer full of eyes (discovered by Holt’s mother in Ash’s bedroom tallboy and Skennin’ Mary (a neighbour with a glass eye that spun when she became angry) and is linked by fi ve “ghost” orchestral interludes.

The short, dazzling, orchestral work St Vitus in the kettle was commissioned by BBC National Orchestra of Wales during Holt's tenure as Composer-in-Association (2008-2014). The grisly end for this saint was a cauldron of boiling hot lead!

Reviews

31st March 2017

quick-witted and haunting. Colin Currie is the soloist in this affectionate and entertaining work, while Nicholas Collon conducts the Hallé

May 2017

The performances are difficult to fault

23rd March 2017

Witness to a Snow Miracle, for violin and orchestra, is not only one of Simon Holt’s finest achievements to date, but one of the most memorable British orchestral scores of the last 30 years...Hanslip’s solo violin seems to veer between portraying the child saint herself and being an onlooker at her gruesome martyrdom.

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