MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

REVIEW


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound Samples & Downloads

 

George BENJAMIN (b. 1960)
Palimpsests (2002) [19:40]
At First Light (1982) [19:03]
Sudden Time (1993) [14:37]
Olicantus (2002) [4:04]
Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Modern Orchestra/George Benjamin; and Oliver Knussen (Olicantus)
Rec. live, 6 March 2003, Flagey, Brussels (Palimpsests); 27 July 1995, Mozarteum, Salzburg (At First Light); 28 February 2000 (Sudden Time) and 17 January 2003 (Olicantus), Alte Oper, Frankfurt
NIMBUS NI5732 [57:26]

Experience Classicsonline



 
 
 
I first became acquainted with the music of George Benjamin through another Nimbus disc, NI5505. Sudden Time features on that disc too, but it was a vocal piece from 1990 that particularly struck me, Upon Silence. For mezzo-soprano and ensemble of viols, and composed for the group Fretwork, this is a remarkable setting of W. B. Yeats’ poem Long-Legged Fly. The work achieves what might be thought impossible, setting a near-perfect text in a totally unexpected and apparently unsuited musical idiom, whilst not only complementing it, but extending and transforming it in such a way that the musical setting becomes quite another work of art, leaving the original poem intact and undisturbed, available to the reader just as before. Fretwork play wonderfully – and the disc includes a second performance of the same work in an adaptation for seven strings – but I was especially in awe, and am still, at the astonishing, stunning performance by Susan Bickley.
 
The rest of that disc is taken up by instrumental and orchestral music, and it took me much longer to come to terms with these. Vocal music, in any event, given the presence of text, is probably easier to appreciate than purely instrumental music, and the other works certainly revealed their secrets more slowly, and required more effort on my part. But the effort was more than justified, as it also was with the present disc. George Benjamin’s music is exquisite, perfectly fashioned, like jewels, but not always easy on the ear, and not always easy to fathom.
 
The earliest work here, At First Light, is written for an ensemble of fourteen players. Such is the acuity of the composer’s ear, however, that the listener is amazed at the variety of colour achieved. The work begins in near-inaudibility, and the tiny first movement is composed of fragments, scraps of ideas, long held notes and twitters, that never really blend into anything tangible. The other movements are longer, the second more dramatic, the third calm, with fragments of melody and ravishing instrumental sonorities. But this is music with few audible signposts. Sudden Time confirms that impression. This is a work for large orchestra, but there is very little in the way of melodic writing, little to latch on to, being composed instead of fragments once again, moments of harmony and ever-changing sonorities. There’s not much sense of pulse or tempo either, the overall feeling being of music which is slow, though emphatically not static. On the other hand there is certainly a sense of progression – in terms of time – in the last third of the piece, and it closes with an extended melodic passage for solo violin, though I think it would take a little while to learn to whistle it. The ending is very abrupt. The music simply stops.
 
Palimpsests, of which this is the first recording, opens with what the notes refer to as “an antique-sounding canzonetta” played by a choir of clarinets, antique-sounding in the sense that Berg’s harmonisation of the Bach choral in his Violin Concerto is antique sounding. This work features rather more surface drama than the earlier two, with considerably more louder and faster-moving music and a general feeling that the writing is more extended, less fragmentary. The ending, uniquely of the four pieces, is loud. The final work on the disc, Olicantus, was written as a “surprise fiftieth birthday present for composer-conductor Oliver Knussen”, though any idea of levity that might be encouraged by the pun in the title is dashed when one hears this sombre piece, composed for fifteen players of low-pitched instruments, anything but celebratory, but of a striking, grave beauty.
 
Oliver Knussen conducts the short piece dedicated to him, the composer the others, and it is difficult to imagine how the performances could be any finer. These musicians are, in short, perfect advocates for this remarkable repertoire. The recorded sound is excellent, and although these are live performances the disc is not marred by applause. The booklet notes, by Stephen Walsh, are very erudite and deal extensively with what might be termed the philosophical aspects of the music. As such they are not much help as a listening guide, but it is difficult to imagine how any words might be. But don’t be put off. Try this disc for yourself, with open ears and an open mind.
 
William Hedley
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.