Every piece of music warps time in its own way, but Richard Causton's music does this particularly tangibly. Appropriately, the piece which first brought him major attention, The Persistence of Memory (1995), takes its title from a Salvador Dalí painting of melting clocks, as if in anticipation of what was to come. This new album La terra impareggiabile, Causton's second full-length release, brings together two works from different areas of his compositional output: a large-scale orchestral work and a song cycle, both of which explore and obscure our perceptions of time and everyday reality. Ik zeg: NU (I Say: NOW) was premiered in 2019 by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, to critical acclaim. Inspired by the title of a book by a Dutch relative of Causton's, it reflects on a statement made by the author's ten-year-old great-nephew: "I say now now, and a moment later it is already history". Causton was inspired by the profundity of this metaphor for how we experience music, but also for life itself. The piece is constructed from two contrasting musical ideas that run throughout: one extremely fast, hyperactive, and weightless; the other extremely slow, with patterns shifting almost inperceptively over time. Causton deftly holds these two temporalities at play simultaneously, pulling the ear in different directions. “Now-ness and then-ness move in parallel in this spacious, beautifully constructed work” (Anna Picard, The Times). The internally complex temporal landscapes of Causton's music contrast with not just the spans of time in which they are heard, but also the durations over which they are created. The song-cycle La terra impareggiabile (The Incomparable Earth) consists of ten discrete songs which were composed between 1996 and 2007, and refined over a further decade, forming the mainstay of Causton's output during that period.”
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Reviews
“.. Sakari Oramo’s premiere performance (recorded here in January 2019) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra has enchanted my ear more with each hearing. Terrific.”
Guy Rickards – Gramophone magazine – January 2023
Performance ***** Recording ***
“… Superbly performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, the resulting masterpiece invites contemplation and time spent on repeated listening.”
Christopher Dingle – BBC Music magazine – January 2023
“… It[this album] includes the impressively sustained orchestral piece Ik zeg: NU, inspired by a family history written by a Dutch relative of the composer, and performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. But the disc is dominated by a superb performance by baritone Marcus Farnsworth and pianist Huw Watkins of the 40-minute La Terra Impareggiabile …”
Andrew Clements – The Guardian – 24 November 2022
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