James MacMillan: Epiclesis; Ninian

On this CD:

1. Trumpet Concerto "Epiclesis"
Composed by James MacMillan
Performed by Royal Scottish National Orchestra with John Wallace
Conducted by Alexander Lazarev

2. Clarinet Concerto "Ninian"
Composed by James MacMillan
Performed by Royal Scottish National Orchestra with John Cushing
Conducted by Alexander Lazarev

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The uncompromising music of James MacMillan offers the listener an opportunity to enter a wild, challenging world. BIS is doing contemporary music a great service by recording two fascinating concertos in stunning sound, with foremost musicians as soloists. Epiclesis is a concerto for trumpet and orchestra. It is dedicated to John Wallace, who is also the soloist on this occasion. MacMillan's extreme technical demands are dispatched with authority, the recording revealing the orchestral detail with exemplary clarity. Epiclesis is Greek for "prayer" or "plea." In the second section, two other trumpets join the main soloist in an aural representation of the Trinity. Ninian is a clarinet concerto written in response to the shadowy figure of its title, who was associated with 14 miracles. MacMillan's aural imagination is again impressive. The second movement ("Dream of Pectgils") is an athletic, spiky dance while in the final movement nightmarish sonorities stand side by side with naive, childlike ones. John Cushing (principal clarinet with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) gives a virtuoso account of the vividly imagined solo part. --Colin Clarke

Amazon.com

The uncompromising music of James MacMillan offers the listener an opportunity to enter a wild, challenging world. BIS is doing contemporary music a great service by recording two fascinating concertos in stunning sound, with foremost musicians as soloists. Epiclesis is a concerto for trumpet and orchestra. It is dedicated to John Wallace, who is also the soloist on this occasion. MacMillan's extreme technical demands are dispatched with authority, the recording revealing the orchestral detail with exemplary clarity. Epiclesis is Greek for "prayer" or "plea." In the second section, two other trumpets join the main soloist in an aural representation of the Trinity. Ninian is a clarinet concerto written in response to the shadowy figure of its title, who was associated with 14 miracles. MacMillan's aural imagination is again impressive. The second movement ("Dream of Pectgils") is an athletic, spiky dance while in the final movement nightmarish sonorities stand side by side with naive, childlike ones. John Cushing (principal clarinet with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) gives a virtuoso account of the vividly imagined solo part. --Colin Clarke

Customer Reviews:

Challenging and Rewarding.......2002-03-31

These pieces by MacMillan confirm the impression that he is emerging as one of the vital composers of the 21st century. As with with Ades and Corigliano, his style is far ranging and eclectic, abstract and difficult at times, but always delivered with conviction and imagination. Some of the material, particularly in the trumpet concerto, makes demands upon the listener but as the title of this review indicates, he produces the goods. Other sections such as the second movement of the clarinet piece instantly draw the listener into a world of strange familiarity, beautiful and utterly fresh. At other times one delights at his wonderful sense of humour (as in the "klezmer" passages), something all to often absent from contemporary classical music.
A few minor performance problems in these difficult to perform works are the only barriers to a five star rating.
Hearing this music gives one faith that contemporary music is in able hands and that genius is far from being the exclusive product of earlier times.

The Miraculous in Antiphony.......2000-10-15

The careers of Peter Maxwell Davies (born 1934) and Kevin MacMillan (born 1959) make a useful comparative study. Davies, the elder of the two, came to maturity in a musical milieu still enamored of serialism; and although Davies early professed an admiration for Mahler, his music tended toward the dissonant and esoteric, even when he strove to write in a more public mode, as he obviously attempted in his Violin Concerto (1988), for Isaac Stern. Manchesterian by birth, Davies has long celebrated both the spiritual culture of the Orkney Islands, where he resides, and the austere evangelical character of the local archipelagic patron-saint, Olaf the Great. Scots by birth, MacMillan, like Davies, explores the spiritual character of the forms taken by Christianity in the North of England and in Scotland in the early medieval period. But - we now arrive at the difference - MacMillan belongs to a generation for whom serialism no longer functions as an unavoidable dogma; he remains free, therefore, to make use of a variety of means to constitute an identifiable musical language. He has done so in his "Triduum," a three-part orchestral commemoration of Easter consisting of a cor anglais concerto, a cello concerto, and a symphony. These works incoporate a full spate of instrumental innovations culled from composers as different as Mahler and Messiaen and combine them with Plain Song and old-fashioned (yet ever new) triadic harmonies. MacMillan brings these resources to bear on the two recent scores represented by the new CD from BIS: His "Epiclesis" (1993; revised 1996), a trumpet concerto; and his "Ninian" (1998), a clarinet concerto. Certain features of "Epiclesis" (Greek for "invocation") will bring to mind the Panufnik of "Sinfonia Sacra" (1964), especially the device of multiple trumpets sounding in antiphony from points without the orchestra; elsewhere, a bit incongruously, one might think of the Swede Jan Sandström's "Motorbike" Concerto. Incredibly, the thunder-sheet plays a role of thematic importance in the composition. When the climax arrives, the Plain Song "Adoro Te," which has been subliminally present all along, peals out. Even the dead must be moved. "Ninian" follows a program about the enigmatic missionary Nyn or Nynia who promulgated the Gospels and made miracles on the Scottish marches in the early Fourth Century A.D. The "Adoro Te" appears; so does a bird-call imitation from Richard Strauss's "Die Schweigsame Frau." Yet the impression is anything but one of dilettantish eclecticism and the overall effect is powerful. Truly miraculous stuff!

Music Track:

Music Track

music track

Recommended Music:

New York, New York [Extra tracks] [Live]

Russian Piano Trios Vol. 2

Orphee Descendant Aux Enfers / Airs / Sonata for 8

Music: Lost Fiddler

Merge

Songs Of The Old Regular Baptists: Lined-Out Hymnody From Southeastern Kentucky

The Absolute Best

Strauss: Violin Sonatas

'The Chic Murray Show' Britain's Funniest Comedian Live in Concert

Poems [Import]

So Far...The Best of Sinéad O'Connor

South of the Border [Import]

Los Titanes de la Bachata

Maker of Heaven and Earth

Don't You Wonder?