James MacMillan - A Scotch Bestiary; Piano Concerto No. 2 (Wayne Marshall; James MacMillan)

Information

Composer: James MacMillan

• (01) A Scotch Bestiary
• (15) Piano Concerto No. 2

Wayne Marshall, piano

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

James MacMillan, conductor

Date: 2006

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2010377

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Review

With the extraordinary rise of James MacMillan at the close of the 1980s, many of his fellow Scots were ready to embrace him as a local hero. But it soon became clear that MacMillan’s attitude to his native country was complicated to say the least. Love of its rich culture, in music and poetry, and empathy with its long and terrible sufferings was balanced by awareness of a darker side: religious bigotry, self-destructiveness, pride that destroyed as well as ennobled. Both sides are evident in the wild musical menagerie A Scotch Bestiary, and in the Second Piano Concerto. But while the Concerto has its moments of spellbound celebration, like the strings’ imitation of improvised Gallic psalm-singing (one of the loveliest things in all folk music) in the central slow movement, A Scotch Bestiary is full of a black vitality which always threatens to explode into pure chaos.

Some of MacMillan’s targets – indicated in titles like ‘The red-handed, no-surrender, howler monkey’ and ‘Scottish Patriots’ – are easy to identify. Others, as the work’s subtitle implies (‘Enigmatic variations on a zoological carnival at a Caledoninan exhibition’), are more elusive to outsiders, but even then the acrid caricature remains wickedly entertaining. It’s all brought off with tremendous zest by Wayne Marshall and the BBC Philharmonic under the composer’s direction; but they’re just as much at home in the contemplative, painfully affectionate parts of the Concerto.

-- Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine

More reviews:

http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cha10377a.php

https://www.allmusic.com/album/james-macmillan-a-scotch-bestiary-piano-concerto-no-2-mw0001850984

https://www.amazon.com/MacMillan-Scotch-Bestiary-Piano-Concerto/dp/B000FMR3Z8

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James MacMillan (born 16 July 1959) is a Scottish classical composer and conductor. He studied composition at the University of Edinburgh with Rita McAllister and Kenneth Leighton, and at Durham University with John Casken. MacMillan came to the attention of the classical establishment with the BBC Scottish SO's premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the Proms in 1990. Further successes have included his second opera The Sacrifice and the St John Passion. MacMillan's music is infused with the spiritual and the political. His Roman Catholic faith has inspired many of his sacred works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_MacMillan

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Wayne Marshall (born 13 January 1961) is an English pianist, organist, and conductor. He is Chief Conductor of WDR Funkhausorchester in Cologne, Germany, and Organist and Associate Artist of the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. He became Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in 2007, and is a celebrated interpreter of George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and other 20th-century American composers. Marshall has recorded extensively for numerous major labels and received an Echo Music Prize (formerly Deutscher Schallplattenpreis) for his Gershwin Songbook CD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Marshall_(classical_musician)
http://waynemarshall.com/

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