Search 
Advanced Search

Disc Module

Disc Details


Title: Mass of the Apocalypse
Soloist(s): Lullaby: Duke Dobing (flute), Peter Dickinson (piano) | Mass: Revd Donald Reeves (speaker), Jo Maggs (soprano), Meriel Dickinson (mezzo soprano), St James’s Singers, James Holland, David Johnson (percussion), John Alley (piano), Ivor Bolton (conductor) | Larkin’s Jazz: Henry Herford (baritone-speaker), The Nash Ensemble, Lionel Friend (conductor) | Five Forgeries: Peter Dickinson, John Flinders (piano) | Air, Metamorphosis: Duke Dobing (flute)
Label Name: Naxos
Catalogue Number: 8.572287
Release Date: 01 November 2009

Contents

Work Title Composer
Air Peter Dickinson
Five Forgeries Peter Dickinson
Larkin's Jazz Peter Dickinson
Lullaby Peter Dickinson
A Mass of the Apocalypse Peter Dickinson
Metamorphosis Peter Dickinson

Reviews

  • Using the Apocalypse story from the Book of Revelation as an allegory for contemporary concerns, Dickinson contrasts formal compositional procedures - like the harmonic cycle underpinning the "Kyrie" - with stylistic lurches towards the blues and, in the "Kyrie", overlaid strata of (presumably) uncoordinated choral speaking - a neat way of expressing early '80s angst about the state we were in. I was also reminded of Tippett's granite lyricism in the flute and piano Lullaby, the most intriguing of the accompanying miniatures.
    Philip Clark, Gramophone Magazine, 01 June 2010
  • ...especially welcome as a telling cross-section of the composer's distinctive voice, his exuberant originality and willingness to challange convention.
    Malcolm Miller, Tempo, 01 January 2010
  • Dickinson is versatile figure: pianist, writer and composer. This selection of (mostly) premiere recordings ranges from a piano piece written under exam conditions in 1955 through to Larkin’s Jazz, from 1989, and embraces his unusual Mass of the Apocalypse, for chorus, soloists, speaker, two percussionists and piano; Five Forgeries, for piano duet (himself with John Flinders); and flute pieces (Duke Dobing). In Larkin’s Jazz, four poems with musical references are spoken against quiet backgrounds by a baritone who elsewhere sings wordlessly. Each poem is surrounded by a prelude and commentary, a cyclic structure bizarrely recalling Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître. The effect is powerful and smokily atmospheric. [THREE STARS]

    Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, 13 December 2009

E-mail

Please sign up for our free newsletter with the latest news and works.

* First Name
 
* Last Name
 
* E-mail