Vito Palumbo: Woven Lights

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The violin concerto (2015) is a formidable beast, cast in several episodes across a single, 30-minute movement. It is often dissonant and violent, contrasted with lyrical lines from the solo... — American Record Guide, May/June 2023 More…

Release Date: 3rd Feb 2023
Catalogue No: BIS2625
Label: BIS
Length: 58 minutes

International Classical Music Awards

2024

Nominated - Contemporary Music

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Palumbo, V: Violin Concerto

Work length31:00

Album only

Francesco D'Orazio
London Symphony Orchestra
Lee Reynolds

Palumbo, V: Chaconne

Work length27:14

Album only

$7.75

$10.50

Francesco D'Orazio, Francesco Abbrescia

I. Woven Lights

Track length18:26

Album only

$5.15

$7.00

II. The Glows in the Dark

Track length8:48

$1.50

$2.60

$3.50

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"The critically acclaimed Italian composer Vito Palumbo has had works performed all over the world by leading orchestras. He began his career with postmodern experimentation, going on to different forms of music theatre. In recent years Palumbo has focused on works for full orchestra, exploring the possibilities of colours and textures –sometimes with the help of electronics – and putting the concept of ‘historical memory’ at the centre of his own composing. With echoes seemingly coming from Alban Berg’s violin concerto, Palumbo’s own Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2015) displays bittersweet lyricism. Characterized by a dramatic language and driven by a strong and varied rhythmic impulse, the single-movement work also offers transitional moments of static beauty typical of the composer’s usual finesse in the scoring. With its title echoing the past, Chaconne for 5-string electric violin and electronics (2019-20) highlights the different ways in which the electronics intertwine with the live electric violin, within a conception animated by a strong theatrical sense, like a script for a play that does not reject emotional gestures. About this work, the composer has remarked ‘I want the meaning of my music to be apparent from listening, without the need for verbal justification.’ Both works are championed by the violinist Francesco D’Orazio, a close collaborator of the composer and the dedicatee of the Chaconne."

Reviews

May/June 2023

The violin concerto (2015) is a formidable beast, cast in several episodes across a single, 30-minute movement. It is often dissonant and violent, contrasted with lyrical lines from the solo violin. Chaconne, except for the soloist, is made up entirely of heightened, pre-recorded, layered violin parts, inspired by Renaissance contrapuntal polyphony. The intensity blew me away…

July/August 2023

It's been a long time since I've heard such solid new music from Italy.

April 2023

Abbrescia has realised the electronics with audible sensitivity, and the London Symphony Orchestra respond with equal finesse to the astute conducting of Lee Reynolds. Warmly recommended, not merely to anyone who feels nostalgia for those distant ‘future utopias’.

6th June 2023

...a jangling and twangling Prospero’s Island. It’s another impressively virtuoso piece – a thing of wonder.

May 2023

There’s a sense of ever-expanding melody that soloist Francesco D’Orazio captures excellently in his warm, generous playing, with an expressive, finely controlled vibrato and abundant character across the rhapsodic writing; the London Symphony orchestra provides spirited support under Lee Reynolds.

CD Choice 5th April 2023

The piece is constructed in a large single movement with a core of astronomical feeling. Italian composers in the modern era are rarer than one would think, but Palumbo does commit service to his profession.

Yorkshire Times 6th May 2023

Palumbo’s ingenuity lies in how he manages to let time and space speak through what Gualberto describes as ‘unusual combinations of timbre’.

Vito Palumbo: Woven Lights

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