Dubach Liepaja Symphony Orchestra Mann - Orchestral Music 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Derek Scott, born in Birmingham in 1950, has an international reputation as an historian of the British music hall and other forms of light entertainment. But he is an outstanding composer in his own right, his music treading a fine line between a very English whimsy and a profoundly felt and natural response to his (often Celtic) subject matter. These works reveal a master craftsman and natural tunesmith, who manages to unite good humor, unerring technique and deep feeling in music of immediate appeal. His two symphonies - originally written for brass band - embody a return to the formal, Classical clarity of Haydn, though expressed with the satisfyingly beefy textures of the modern orchestra. He lists among his influences Shostakovich and Sibelius and, less predictably, The Beatles and The Kinks.

Derek Scott, born 1950, Birmingham, has an international reputation as a leading historian of the British music hall and other forms of light entertainment but he is an outstanding composer in his own right, his music treading a fine line between a very English whimsy and a profoundly felt and natural response to his (often Celtic) subject matter. These works reveal a master craftsman and natural tunesmith, who manages to unite good humor, unerring technique and deep feeling, in music of immediate appeal. Scott's Airs and Dances is a real rarity a concerto for the Highland bagpipe and orchestra (he plays the instrument himself), a memorable mix of his own melodies and pipe tunes collected on the Isle of Skye, off the West Coast of Scotland.

Fridrich Bruk - born in Kharkov in 1937 and a Finnish resident since 1974 - made his name as a composer of tangos. But the heart of his music lies in a series of (to date) 21 symphonies, which have a strong narrative element, some reflecting Jewish themes, others inspired by Karelia and Finland. The three most recent together form a kind of meta-symphony premised on the persecution of the Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. Bruk's kaleidoscopic use of orchestral color, his angular but expressive melodies and his dramatic musical language reflect this urge to chronicle the outrage visited on his fellow Jews - and which directly impinged on his own life.