Marshall-Luck,Robert / Spooner,Joseph - Exploring Spirit - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

EM Records is delighted to present InchExploring SpiritInch, a disc the central concept of which is the profoundly transformative effect of a questioning, explorative treatment of musical material and the sense of vividness and invigoration that such an approach can bring. The recording is dedicated to the memory of Robert Luck, father of the violinist on the disc, who died the day before the recording sessions began, and whose life personified the questing outlook that InchExploring SpiritInch celebrates. The disc opens with Peter Maxwell Davies's InchSonata for Violin AloneInch, a set of 22 variations on a wide-ranging and richly contrasted theme, different variations each exploring certain aspects of the work's opening minutes. Rather than a InchTheme and VariationsInch in the traditionally classical sense, it is a rhapsodic unfolding - a kaleidoscopic expansion - that, by means of profound and minute exploration, enrichens and enlivens the material, revealing subtleties and relationships not at first apparent. It is followed by the InchFantasia on Yorkshire Folk TunesInch by Richard Pantcheff, a work which uses six folk melodies as it's basis, elaborating them in a way that presents them in a new context whilst maintaining their sense of location and identity. These are not simple harmonisations, but arrangements which emphasise the many different facets of the tunes and their words. The same composer's InchIntroduction and AllegroInch for violin and cello essentially concerns itself with the interaction of the two instruments' thematic material, the (occasional) finding of common ground, but also vigorous disagreement. As is the case with a number of this composer's works, there is a sense in which the instruments are each exploring the theme of loss or bereavement and seeking to reveal where there is mutual understanding. By contrast, the nature of the dialogue