Biography
US/UK composer Geoffrey Gordon’s contributions to the contemporary music repertoire have been and continue to be exceptional. Intense and luxuriant harmony, passionate melody and superb handling of instrumentation and sonic textures define his music. His works include orchestral and chamber music—vocal and instrumental —as well as scores for theater, dance and film. His music has been called “darkly seductive” (New York Times), "complex, richly-satisfying " (BBC Music Magazine), “luminous and ecstatic” (Gramophone), "taut and exhilarating…
Mythologies and Mad Songs
Acclaimed UK record label Orchid Classics to release Mythologies and Mad Songs, the new recording of orchestral works by composer Geoffrey Gordon, featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia, with legendary conductor Martyn Brabbins and soloists Dimitri Mestdag and Laurent Ben Slimane.
"Richard Strauss once suggested that Elektra should be conducted like Mendelssohn’s ‘fairy music’. And if you’ve ever wondered what such light-footed fantasy might sound like if translated into the sound world of a virtuoso post-Straussian orchestra – well, so, apparently, has Geoffrey Gordon. His 2017 tone poem Puck – fleeing from the dawn is exactly that: a featherweight Shakespearean caprice written (to coin a phrase) on the point of a needle, and played with dazzling élan by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins."
-Gramophone/Richard Bratby (August 2024)
“The orchestral music of Geoffrey Gordon is especially vivid, at the same time both dramatic and poetic. These qualities make great demands on performers, but demands that are satisfying in their challenge. Recording the various pieces was very enjoyable and the presence of Geoffrey at the sessions was both inspiring and stimulating.”
-Martyn Brabbins
MYTHOLOGIES AND MAD SONGS
With works inspired by William Blake, Shakespeare and Franz Kafka - in addtion to the intrepid early 20th c. explorations of Peary and Shackleton - Mythologies and Mad Songs presents four mesmerizing orchestral works by celebrated British-American composer Geoffrey Gordon, each exquisitely captured in performance by the distinguished Philharmonia and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the masterful guidance of legendary conductor Martyn Brabbins. A unique and exceptional fusion of Gordon's compelling artistry, the soloists' and orchestras' unparalleled precision, skill and emotive depth, and Brabbins' interpretive brilliance, Gordon’s works find a perfect home with these two renowned orchestras ...on Orchid Classics.
Produced in association with BBC Radio 3 and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Overtones: Eolian for harp and orchestra
Geoffrey Gordon's concerto for harp and orchestra, Eolian - inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem - was commissioned by the Brussels Philharmonic and is recorded here by the orchestra, with soloist Eline Groslot and conductor Karen Kamensek, on the Antarctica Records label.
"A spectacular Concerto for Harp and Orchestra (Brussels Philharmonic) composed in 2022 by composer Geoffrey Gordon is the core of the recording."
- The Vinyl Groove (April 2023)
"[Overtones] is built around Geoffrey Gordon's haunting and intense Eolian: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, presented here in its world premiere recording."
- CD Hotlist (June 2023)
A new, dramatic and virtuosic concerto in three movements for harp and orchestra, Eolian draws title and inspiration from the well-known poem The Eolian Harp (1795) by English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The concerto, referencing the Aeolian harp (in fact a small lute-like instrument which creates melodious music when the wind blows across its strings), channels the beauty and intensity of expression which Coleridge brings to his deeply expressive and personal text. Allegorically, the harp symbolizes the poet and the wind symbolizes God’s breath - the poem contemplates man’s relationship with nature and the divine. Both the order and chaos found in nature abound here as the orchestra’s palette evokes sensual pleasure, divine force and staggering creative power, through Gordon’s lyrical and luminous writing. A riveting and intense first movement: “A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere—”. The exquisite slow second movement, contemplative, hushed and suspended: “Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument…”, “The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main...”. The apogee of nature’s beauty represented as the purest form of allure and joy in the final movement: “Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break On vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring…”. Gordon’s Eolian marks an outstanding addition to the harp repertoire and to 21st century orchestral music more generally.