Howard Skempton: Bolt From The Blue
Release Date: 2010
Label: mode records
EXAUDI’s second CD devoted to the music of British experimentalist Howard Skempton focuses on his jewel-like miniatures for vocal consort and for solo piano.
Description
EXAUDI’s second CD devoted to the music of British experimentalist Howard Skempton focuses on his jewel-like miniatures for vocal consort and for solo piano. Skempton’s unerring ear for the grain of vocal textures yields ravishing results in pieces like the Five Poems of Mary Webb, for three female voices, and the Two Poems of Edward Thomas. As a counterpoint to the vocal items, pianist Daniel Becker offers a varied selection of recent piano pieces as well as the ever-popular Durham Strike and Well, well, Cornelius. Taking his cue from both The Beatles and Morton Feldman, from experimentalism and folk, Skempton’s music is a unique phenomenon.
Howard Skempton Five Poems of Mary Webb
The Snare
Rose-berries
Four-by-the-clock
Music
Emerson Songs
Music, when soft voices die
Snape Interval
Two Poems of Edward Thomas
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Delivery & returns
Reviews
“There are 37 works on this beautifully produced disc, and sadly there’s no space to rhapsodise about each one. Daniel Becker plays the piano works with modesty and affection, and James Weeks’s EXAUDI sing the choral pieces with a combination of warmth and unnerving accuracy.” The Arts Desk
“The care taken over the selection of pieces makes this anthology a representative one: never in doubt are the variety and depth of his thinking within its chosen limits…Skempton invariably ‘explains’ his texts as effortlessly as EXAUDI renders his settings.” International Record Review
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