Emily Howard - Torus
£13.25 £10.60
save £2.65 (20%)
special offer ending 27/05/2024
In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day
Despatch Information
This despatch estimate is based on information from both our own stock and the UK supplier's stock.
If ordering multiple items, we will aim to send everything together so the longest despatch estimate will apply to the complete order.
If you would rather receive certain items more quickly, please place them on a separate order.
If any unexpected delays occur, we will keep you informed of progress via email and not allow other items on the order to be held up.
If you would prefer to receive everything together regardless of any delay, please let us know via email.
Pre-orders will be despatched as close as possible to the release date.
Label: NMC Recordings
Cat No: NMCD274
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Release Date: 28th April 2023
Contents
Artists
BBC PhilharmonicBBC National Orchestra of Wales
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductors
Vimbayi KaziboniMark Wigglesworth
Gabriella Teychenne
Martyn Brabbins
Works
AntisphereCompass
Torus
sphere
Artists
BBC PhilharmonicBBC National Orchestra of Wales
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductors
Vimbayi KaziboniMark Wigglesworth
Gabriella Teychenne
Martyn Brabbins
About
The work which gives the album its name, Torus, was a 2016 BBC Proms Commission described by The Times as "visionary", and was the winner of the orchestral category of the 2017 British Composer Awards. Here the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins bring to life Howard's meditation on the shape which her collaborator, the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy describes in his notes for the album as "a finite flat geometry where top and bottom are joined into a cylinder which is then connected at both ends to make a doughnut shape." Howard translates this into vivid music punctuated with continual oscillations and pulsations, with the void in the centre of the shape playing a vital part in this music of stark contrasts.
Antisphere, which was featured in the Barbican's high-profile Life Rewired season in 2019, interprets the impossibly concave imaginary shape of its namesake. An uncanny panorama of "huge gyrations" and "estranged pitches" (Paul Griffiths), are heard here performed by the BBC Philharmonic with conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni.
Although she is inspired by the intricate mathematical properties of each form, Howard goes further to produce her Orchestral Geometries. She meditates on each form, its distinct character and "shape-energy", saying, "the musical score often emerges through the consideration of multiple journeys around the imagined entity, from multiple viewpoints." During the composition of the smallerscale work sphere, Howard imagined travelling across the convex surface of the shape, encountering different landscapes which are brought to life in this recording by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.
The newest work on the album is Compass for string septet (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group with conductor Gabriella Teychenné) and solo percussionist (Julian Warburton). Howard conceives of this piece as a synthesis and evolution of her Orchestral Geometries, elaborating on the soundworlds of all three geometric forms, producing music which is more weird, more abstract, perhaps symbolising a new chapter in the composer's body of work.
This new album follows Magnetite, the critically-acclaimed portrait disc which NMC released in 2016 as part of the label's Debut Disc series.
Reviews
Error on this page? Let us know here
Need more information on this product? Click here