5.0 out of 5 stars
Ballet Music Is Getting Better !, October 3, 2011
This review is from: McCabe: Edward II (Audio CD)
John McCabe began his career as a composer very much part of the powerful group of serial writers that stood at the center of British musical life in the late 1960s and early 1970s.(Lutyens, Searle, Goehr, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies etc.) Over the years he dropped strict serial ideas in favor of a kind of free atonality which occasionally, when expressively apt, will settle comfortably into a traditional tonality.
For the ballet EDWARD II, based on Marlowe, Brecht and 'Le Roman De Fauvel', about England's (probably) bisexual king, he has created a large scale thematically integrated score of over 90 minutes duration. The music is beautiful and engrossing from beginning to end.
The Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Barry Wordsworth plays the difficult music magnificently.
The sound recording is excellent, and the liner notes, full of interesting information about the historic Edward II and about McCabe's music are first rate.
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