Michael Zev Gordon The Impermanence of Things Widmann Larsen-Maguire - NMCD277 - Contemporain

Michael Zev Gordon is a composer whose music is deeply engaged with the subjects of memory and loss. These themes are central to the three large-scale works which comprise this new portrait album, named The Impermanence of Things. The album opens with a seven-movement orchestral work performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jukka Pekka Saraste, which explores our awareness of the passing of time. Time pushes on, time pulls back, before seeming to stand still completely as we journey towards the end of the work. The final movement shares its name with the overall title – Bohortha – which is a tiny village lying at the end of a remote Cornish peninsula, an evocative symbol of open-endedness. If Bohortha consists of many small, contrasting fragments, the Violin Concerto is constructed more conventionally, with both the work's structure and expressive character being influenced by early exploratory sessions with the soloist, Carolin Widmann. Gordon has commented that he was inspired by ‘just how many nuances of singing she could bring to her instrument: intense and open, strained and fragile’. Lyrical melodies collide with dissonant clusters in this recording by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Catherine Larsen-Maguire. Conventions are again turned on their head in The Impermanence of Things for piano (Huw Watkins), ensemble (London Sinfonietta) and electronics. Rather than playing the traditional soloist role, the piano instead acts as a linchpin, around which thirteen short movements revolve. Throughout the work, a constant tension between forward and backward, reveals an ultimate yearning for stillness in the present. Gordon has been the recipient of the Prix Italia, and two British Composer Awards. Two previous portrait discs – On Memory (NMC D144) and In the Middle of Things – were both in The Times' ‘100 Best Albums of the Year’ lists.