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             


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

REVIEW


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

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £9 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound clips and Downloads

Apollo Saxophone Orchestra: Perpetual Motion
Barbara THOMPSON (b.1944)
Perpetual Motion [5:17]
Dear Bach [7:20]
Celebration [4:36]
Black [4:20]
Red [5:09]
Green [6:56]
iTango [2:28]
Adagio [9:15]
Bulletproof [4:34]
Dear Bach…Epitaph [2:03]
Apollo Saxophone Orchestra
rec. 3-5 January 2012, Royal Northern College of Music. DDD
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI6200 [52:06]

Experience Classicsonline



 
Mention the name Barbara Thompson to a jazz fan and back will come one word: Paraphernalia. Her band was for so long an adornment on the local and international scene that it's sometimes forgotten how prolific and excellent a composer she is. Such evidence is to be heard in spades in this disc.
 
Her twelve-saxophone ensemble plays ten original works. One can hear from the first track, Perpetual Motion how rich and colourful is her scoring, its density and contrapuntal cleverness going hand in hand. Here that feeling is further vitalised by a slowing down to a frolicking section, rather like a Scotch Snap. Her Dear Bach hones in on an almost Stokowskian sense of the composer's sheer amplitude, her organ chords and 'pedal' writing, as transferred to the saxophonic band, allowing little solo fantasias to emerge from the music's thickets, like a theme and variation. To me, the haunting aura of Gil Evans is also present.
 
A Latino dance courses through Celebration its Nymanesque generation of electricity - it's not very reminiscent of Nyman, in truth, and does swing more - leading on to an exultant sopranino dance. The next three tracks are derived from her Quartet No.2. Black features striking mellophones in a stark, almost granitic piece of writing, whilst Red is unsettled, quirky and tough, full of vivid sonorities. She says that Green 'wrote itself' but it most certainly needed her inspiration!
 
What is so refreshing about Thompson's writing for this large all-saxophone ensemble is its variety. One can easily imagine how a neophyte would have struggled. But as an eminent executant herself, she knows the instrument from the inside and can write for it, as Benny Carter did before her, with a technical assurance and very personalised and particular sound world that makes her writing so distinctive.
 
To take just one more example, Bulletproof has a snazzy, cinematic drive both exciting and visceral and one that instantly compels attention. Finally and fittingly she reprises Bach in the final track, on which she plays soprano, in a kind of aria da capo kind of way (think: The Goldberg Variations).
 
The ensemble includes some inspiring musicians - Rob Buckland and Andy Scott to the fore - and plays with terrific verve.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 

See also review by Oleg Ledeniov


 

 

 

 


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






Error processing SSI file