Boosey & Hawkes

Karl Jenkins: Concertos on new disc from EMI

(September 2008)

In recent years Karl Jenkins has attracted most international attention for his choral music, so his lastest release from EMI provides a new slant on his output, shifting the focus onto his orchestral music with five of his concertos (50999-5002352-3).

Listen to tracks from the new album in the Karl Jenkins AV area.

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Quirk was written for a concertante group of flute, keyboard and percussion soloists from the London Symphony Orchestra, who give the Welsh premiere of the work in Swansea on 4 October. The other works on the disc are the new violin concerto Sarikiz, Over the Stone for harp and orchestra and the Corelli arrangement La Folia for marimba and strings. The album is rounded off with the re-recording of the first movement of Palladio, a concerto grosso that Jenkins composed in 1996.

The performers include London Symphony Orchestra Principals Gareth Davies (flutes), John Alley (keyboards) and Neil Percy (percussion), as well as harpist Catrin Finch and violinist Marat Bisengaliev with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl Jenkins. The disc provides attractive fare for the choreographers who are increasingly setting Jenkins’s music for dance.

"Karl Jenkins is a rarity among contemporary composers, balancing popularity with innovation, his fancy for unusual instrumental combinations not diminishing his saleability. Like Robert Wyatt, Jenkins paid his jazz-rock dues in Soft Machine, of which he became the final custodian, and that questing spirit is well in evidence here in pieces such as La Folia, his concerto for marimba and orchestra, and in Quirk itself. Snap alternates noir-ish film music in the style of Elmer Bernstein with staccato flute, piano and marimba, recalling John Adams; Chasing the Goose locates gestalt between salsa and quirky cartoon music; the variegations of Raga Religioso are well-signalled by its pan-cultural title. Over the Stone is a double harp concerto commissioned by Prince Charles, while the violin concerto Sarikiz uses Kazakh hand percussion as part of the accompaniment to Marat Bisengaliev's dazzling performance, full of galloping Gypsy brio."
The Independent

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