The Masterprize Competition was a welcome and timely development, its stated aim to find ‘new works for symphony orchestra that are truly original and have the power to communicate and engage a broad range of music-lovers’. Fine sentiments, but does this disc of the six finalists add up to more than a memento of a high-profile event?
Two Poems from Tang is by some distance the most resourceful and accomplished work here; intricate, fastidious and, in the second poem, with a robust humour, it confirms AA’s recent endorsement of Zhou Long’s chamber music (Cala, 3/98). Carl Vine’s Descent is as vividly descriptive as its soundtrack origins would suggest, although its often cliched gestures do not represent this composer’s flamboyant orchestral style at its most compulsive (for which turn to the first three symphonies (ABC Classics, 10/95). Even so, it has more substance than Stephen Hartke’s brash and overcalculated show-piece or, for that matter, Daniele Gasparini’s flashy Alice-inspired cameos, complete with ‘allusions’ of mind-numbing crassness. Victoria Borisova-Ollas brings some welcome integrity to her engaging study, its assured technique more than compensating for an (as yet) unfocused idiom. As for the winning entry, Andrew March offers an attractive if diffuse seascape, its sincerity unquestionable.
Performances and recording mirror the all-round professionalism of the Masterprize concept. Do buy this disc (you could, of course, obtain it as part of the March 1998 BBC Music Magazine for less outlay). It sheds valuable light on the nature of present-day orchestral composition, as well as the wider cultural conditions that can make it happen.'