Reviews

"All four works on this disc represent Gordon’s responses to differing pre-existing paintings, poetry or prose. The disc consists of two orchestral works that exhibit a real flair for textures and timbres and two concertante works both which reveal a composer with an impressive understanding for effective and idiomatic writing for instruments both collectively and soloistically. The disc opens with Puck – fleeing from the dawn which is a very effective orchestral scherzo/miniature tone poem and as such would make a brilliant concert opener....The music flickers and darts in a way that skilfully encapsulates the nocturnal impishness of Shakespeare’s 'knavish sprite' from A Midsummer Night’s Dream....

This is a disc of serious music seriously well-played with engineering and presentation to match. Another fine release from Orchid Classics who seem to devote a lot of time and effort into making recordings that feature fine artists performing often unusual or unexpected repertoire. Feathers in caps all round."

"The music of Geoffrey Gordon has a dual axis: On one hand, it is immediate and visceral in impact; listen further, and there are myriad gifts below the surface. A good example of this is the first piece, PUCK (2017). There is a primal energy to much of the writing, married to a sense of unstoppable movement; the very first gesture could easily be construed as post-post-Mendelssohn in its fleetness, a Modernist whisp. The performance, by the BBC Scottish SO and Martyn Brabbins, is phenomenal. It seems completely in tune with Gordon’s score at all times, supported by an equally fine recording....

This is a most remarkable disc from a composer who should have greater exposure. The standard of performance is stratospheric; the musical invention just as much so."

Recommended.

“Jeux de Création by the American composer Geoffrey Gordon is a brilliant, even spectacular, work in all respects.”

"Geoffrey Gordon has built up a substantial and wide-ranging catalogue over the last quarter of a century, with the three works featured here attesting to his imaginative outlook on the musical past.

Inspired by Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann’s powerful if often fanciful take on the creative ego, the Cello Concerto (2013) falls into a Prologue, seven Episodes and Epilogue that play continuously for 24 minutes (paralleling those 24 years of creativity granted in the Faustian pact). Its trajectory from ‘innocence to madness’ might easily risk overkill but the Dutilleux-like finesse Gordon instils into the relationship of soloist and orchestra (cello only coming to the fore in two trenchant cadenza passages) helps to maintain expressive focus throughout."

Gordon’s idiom is dense, kinetic, multi-layered, extremely colorful in using both the cello and the orchestra, and theatrical. Don’t expect the cello in its typical role as soulful singer. The last contemporary cello concertos that had a lasting impact were composed by Schnittke, Dutilleux, and Lutoslawski. They function as laboratories, if you will, for experimenting with the cello’s hidden capacities. Gordon mines the same vein, showing us that the cello can tremble, shudder, shriek, whine, keen, grow hysterical or menacing, etc. Here the cello is an agitated participant from the first... What Gordon presents, like (Robert) Schumann when he refers to the mad musician Kreisler, is a composer’s private transformation of his own literary response into musical notation...Gordon’s concerto reminded me instantly of Schoenberg’s 1929–30 Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, not as a direct influence but by dint of a musical imagination creating a cinema of the mind. Schoenberg’s score never reached the movie house; Gordon’s concerto is so dramatic that it would leap off the screen, blotting out the visuals. There’s a schrecklich air to Gordon’s concerto which befits Leverkühn’s dance with the Devil...Gordon’s Cello Concerto is a remarkable score of eye-opening dimensions for both cellist and listener. It deserves to be widely played and appreciated."

A superb new Naxos release, Jeux de création, spotlights Anne-Sophie Bertrand, the French-born solo harpist of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Bertrand commissioned Jeux de création from composer Geoffrey Gordon. The work’s title (also the title of the Naxos CD) refers to Gordon’s incorporation of thematic material from Debussy’s Jeux and Milhaud’s La création du monde. Gordon’s Jeux de création ... conjures an inviting, dreamlike soundscape, one that complements in a most beguiling fashion the numerous Impressionist works on this recital. 

"An impressive work, expertly orchestrated and with apocalyptic accents, the creation of American composer Geoffrey Gordon, PUCK – fleeing from the dawn (inspired by the world of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream ) is executed with power and attention to detail."

Geoffrey Gordon’s Saint Blue, inspired by two Kandinsky paintings ('All Saints 1' and 'In Blue', well worth a web search), is by far the best work on this engaging disc; a taut and exhilarating single movement concerto, wonderfully played by soloists Simon Desbruslais and Clare Hammond.

".....the darkly seductive Clarinet Quintet by Geoffrey Gordon received its world premiere with the wonderful clarinetist Anthony McGill joining the JACK players.

Mr. Gordon’s Clarinet Quintet combines a similar zest for sonic experimentation with a four-movement structure built around thematic signposts — reiterations of an opening motif — that guide the listener through a colorful and atmospheric journey. That motif is built on accordion-like layered string chords from which the clarinet emerges almost coyly, with a veiled sound and sinewy flutter.

Across four movements, the interaction between clarinet and strings changes, with moments of bright commonality and others in which the warm, musky clarinet tone contrasts with the sharper and glossier one of the string quartet. In the third movement, small cells of players break away for a series of arresting duos and a trio that chart different interpersonal dynamics. The work ends softly on a languid low clarinet trill, which Mr. McGill played so quietly that the final notes were not so much heard as felt as gently pulsating airwaves."