Voyage - RPO
CD
RRP £20.30 historic list price — see live Amazon pricing below
- Performers
- Gunning/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
- Label
- Discovery Music & Vision
- Barcode
- 5060293320129
Three recent works by the British composer who became well-known for his TV and film scores (Agatha Christie¹s Poirot, Rebecca, Middlemarch, La Vie en Rose etc.) and then turned his attention to concert works. After the large 5th Symphony (also available on Discovery) the composer felt the need to tackle something a little more optimistic and smaller in scale, and the 6th returns to the continuous forms of his earlier 1st, 3rd and 4th symphonies. The music is characteristically dramatic and expressive with vivid use of the orchestra. Night Voyage is more akin to a tone-poem, and traces an imaginary journey by sea; the music is pictorial and starts and finishes in an evocative atmosphere of calm, but we travel through a violent storm in the central section. There is an obvious parallel here with a psychological journey; we work through a period of great difficulty but achieve resolution of a sort, somewhat chastened. Symphony no 7 continues the theme of journeying; as in the 6th, the music plays continuously and is subdivided into several contrasting sections. Some are darkly expressive, some optimistic, some mysterious, and towards the end the music is unashamedly heroic. The theme of overcoming difficulties figures frequently in Gunning¹s work, and never more so than in his 7th Symphony. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by the composer in striking, lively, and thoroughly sympathetic performances.
This recording is part of the ClassicalMusicStore.co.uk heritage catalogue. The store is no longer trading, but you can find this title — and thousands of other classical and jazz recordings — at a specialist retailer.
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