Search - Mark-Anthony Turnage, Simon Rattle, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra :: Turnage: Drowned Out/Kai/Three Screaming Popes/Momentum

Required listening!

Dr. Christopher Coleman | HONG KONG | 10/06/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For my money, Mark-Anthony Turnage is the best composer the UK's produced since Benjamin Britten; and if he keeps up his standards he might exceed Britten in significance. Admittedly, his music is not for everyone, it's often brash and noisy, filled with saxophones and percussion. But it's also superbly crafted, not only in terms of its dynamic shape--the overall form--but also on the level of melody. Even the noisiest of it is melodic in a way that audiences willing to give it a chance can follow. Drowned Out, for example, starts with a clashing introduction, but hidden in the introductory chord is the falling figure which is shortly revealed as the main motivic material in the piece. An extended theme in the cellos, later joined in some terrific orchestration by all the strings plus tuba, is created out of this motivic unit in traditional ways so that anyone is aware of the unity of the theme, even if they can't describe its creation through processes of inversion, extension, etc. Most importantly, it's a compelling melody, perfect for the mood Turnage is trying to create.



Three Screaming Popes (great title!--from a series of paintings by a modern English artist) is for me the best work on a CD full of terrific pieces. Jazzy and sinister and colorful, it's a wild orchestral romp like the Rite of Spring, updated. Kai, for cello and ensemble, shares the sound world of Three Screaming Popes, with the sinister saxophone wailing away like a demented jazzer in a heroin daze. Turnage really shines with the orchestration here, making a smaller ensemble sound like a full orchestra. Only in the final work, Momentum, does the CD in fact lose Momentum. The piece starts out in a very promising way, but about halfway through takes an unexpected turn into a very explicitly jazzy passage that doesn't come off as effectively as similar passages in other works. Momentum doesn't quite jell, and in fact doesn't come to the thunderous conclusion we're lead to expect from the title--around the 6th minute of a 10 minute piece it loses energy and never picks it up again. But if it's a miscue, it's one that can easily be forgiven due to the strength of the rest of the CD. If you have adventurous tastes at all, you must buy this CD."