Simply because he has not kept up a flow of major works since his first large-scale success, the Viola Concerto, Simon Bainbridge might be regarded as a relatively peripheral figure on the contemporary British scene. Yet the concerto, and its substantial successor, the Fantasia for Double Orchestra, are among the most significant British compositions of the last 20 years. The Fantasia, in particular, is approachable in a way that is often talked down by having the label ''neo-romantic'' stuck on it. But this is coherent music with a distinctive tone of voice, its style eclectic enough to tease the listener with echoes of Das Rheingold at the outset, yet rendering attractive and convincing the authentically modern conclusions which Bainbridge draws from this archetypal harmonic premiss. I found the music's chain of events even more fascinating than the spatial give-and-take which the symmetrical layout of the two orchestras makes possible, and which is fully explained in the useful notes.
The Viola Concerto is an ambitious early effort: Bainbridge was only 24 when he finished it. This CD reissue of a particularly sensitive, sympathetic performance comes up very well, and although the concerto is less personal and more protracted than the Fantasia it builds its large, generally restrained paragraphs with notable thematic resourcefulness and prodigious aural imagination. The hard-edged moments, and the almost aggressive ending, emerge organically from this more gentle, reflective background. Nothing is simply stuck on, or in, for effect.
The cheerful, neo-minimalist Concertante in Moto Perpetuo completes a finely performed and recorded disc which demonstrates the expressive vitality of a language that is all the more personal for not shutting the door on tradition, and a style that can be serious and expansive without lapsing into ponderousness. Bainbridge's music has a satisfying range of expressive shades, so this is a disc to persuade the sceptics as well as to please the already-converted.'