Symphonies Nos 3 and 4 Oboe Concerto

Product description Verity Gunning, hautbois - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Christopher Gunning, direction Review It is relatively uncommon for a composer who has spent quite a few years writing prize-winning scores for film and TV--with a specialty in low-grade horror vehicles at that--to begin compiling a substantial body of symphonic works that already comprises four symphonies and a number of concertos. Yet that is a fair description of the career of Englishman Christopher Gunning (b. 1944), whose concert music, as well as his conducting skills--are imposingly highlighted on this Chandos release. With such impeccable credentials as studies with Edmund Rubbra and Richard Rodney Bennett behind him, it's no wonder Gunning wanted to break free of the background-scoring ghetto. In addition to a gorgeous Thames Rhapsody for sax and orchestra issued on one of the Dutton British Light Music collections, a few years ago Albany released a disc including his Piano Concerto, a tone poem Storm, and a very compelling First Symphony. As he revealed in that initial encounter, Gunning has an inherent fondness for single-movement forms in which a simple germinal motif becomes the springboard for an organically conceived series of carefully judged and modulated developments and transformations. This kind of "continuous metamorphosis" exemplified by masters such as Janá?ek, Saeverud, Holmboe, Tippett, and our own Roy Harris gives the musical line and argument a powerful dramatic lift and momentum, and Gunning's two symphonies hereby adhere to this dynamic. Both are around 25 minutes in duration and fall into five loosely demarcated sections, and both make for absorbing listening that is not unrelated to the composer's cinematic expertise. The Third Symphony, written in 2005, grew out of a difficult period in the composer's life and was also inspired in part by his love of the Welsh countryside (which, incidentally, is vividly depicted by two stunning booklet photographs). While the Fourth Symphony of 2007 reflects a limited victory over personal problems, neither work is obviously programmatic; in fact, they both make more emotional and structural sense as formal explorations of striking musical ideas. Between these two dramatically cogent works is a somewhat more conventional but nonetheless very appealing Oboe Concerto of 2004, written for the composer's daughte