BLACKFORD The Great Animal Orchestra SAINT-SAËNS Carnival of the Animals
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns, Richard Blackford
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Nimbus Alliance
Magazine Review Date: 10/2014
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 75
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: NI6274
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
The Great Animal Orchestra: Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes |
Richard Blackford, Composer
BBC National Orchestra of Wales Martyn Brabbins, Conductor Richard Blackford, Composer |
(Le) Carnaval des animaux, 'Carnival of the Animals' |
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
BBC National Orchestra of Wales Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer Martyn Brabbins, Conductor |
Author: Adrian Edwards
The first movement, a swift allegro, opens in the Borneo rain forest, with birdsong and a pair of gibbons. A Scherzo of chattering frogs and woodpecker follows, then an elegy of wailing beavers. A march of elephants leads into ‘The Song of the American Musician Wren’. Blackford is a dab hand with his orchestral palette. His scoring is colourful and he fashions a suite in symphonic outline with an internal structure to each movement. The elegy comes from the heart, while the movement to the American wren is a joyous paean to nature, with the pentatonic scale running through it to embrace the wide outdoors. One caveat of concern is the parallel to characters in other musical works – Bernstein’s Jets and Sharks in Blackford’s second-movement ‘Scherzo and Riffs’, Mussorgsky’s ‘Bydło’ in the fourth-movement march.
The coupling is Blackford’s orchestration of Carnival of the Animals. Not even the expert playing of the BBC NOW can reconcile me to it – a turkey if ever there was one. Cheers though for The Great Animal Orchestra – it’s an entertaining piece which succeeds in bringing the outdoors indoors, to paraphrase a remark in the accompanying interview on the CD.
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