Conyngham Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Barry Conyngham
Label: Cala
Magazine Review Date: 2/1994
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 55
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CACD1008

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Southern Cross Double Concerto for Violin, Piano a |
Barry Conyngham, Composer
Barry Conyngham, Composer Geoffrey Simon, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra Robert Davidovici, Violin Tamás Ungár, Piano |
Monuments |
Barry Conyngham, Composer
Barry Conyngham, Composer Geoffrey Simon, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra Robert Davidovici, Violin |
Composer or Director: Barry Conyngham
Label: Cala
Magazine Review Date: 2/1994
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CAMC1008

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Southern Cross Double Concerto for Violin, Piano a |
Barry Conyngham, Composer
Barry Conyngham, Composer Geoffrey Simon, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra Robert Davidovici, Violin Tamás Ungár, Piano |
Monuments |
Barry Conyngham, Composer
Barry Conyngham, Composer Geoffrey Simon, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra Robert Davidovici, Violin |
Author: Arnold Whittall
The double concerto Southern Cross (1981) sets out to illustrate the concepts of its five movement titles—''Magnitude'', ''Velocity'', ''Duration'', ''Collisions'', ''Distance''—and although it does this with some flair, I felt that time was being marked rather than mastered. The ideas simply aren't strong enough, at least until the work's big orchestral coda, which seems to bury the soloists in a gesture of defiant dismissal.
Monuments (1989) continues the project of attempting to integrate concerto form with a pictorial plan, and in each of the movement titles Conyngham juxtaposes a natural feature of the Australian landscape with a man-made structure—for example, Uluru (or Ayers Rock) and the Sydney Opera House. Again, the music is strong on the establishment of atmosphere, but less convincing as a treatment or development of substantial musical ideas. Asking the soloist to move between the piano and the DX7 synthesizer opens up a wider range of tone-colours, but the impression remains of an essentially romantic style that only assumes a more modern guise from time to time. In the last movement of Monuments Conyngham establishes an engaging, even primitive vitality, and I wished that more of the music in these compositions had cut through its own rather ponderous rhetoric in this way.'
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