Review | ARNOLD WHITTALL | Page 65 - December 2004

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THERE has been no more enlightened or discerning patron of contemporary music in the twentieth century than Paul Sacher (b. 1926). Trained in Basle...
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ARNOLD WHITTALL

Contemporary music specialists tend to be well practised in doling out medicine to allegedly less enlightened friends and acquaintances, claiming that it does them good and could even prove enjoyable in the longer run. But I defy anyone to find James Dillon's piano cycle The Book of Elements unpalatable, even at first hearing. The design, with its unambiguous reliance on repetition, is easy to grasp, and the music involves imaginative rethinkings of traditional piano textures at every stage. For myself, I'd hope for a quite different kind of modernity - that represented by Robert Simpson's last symphony, No 11, in the Hyperion release that crowns that label's dedicated advocacy of one of the last century's most characterful composers.

11;2-73:•'' •••‘' • f

NAM rdifti,:i,.4±4 Dillon

The Book of Elements Kawai

NMC 0 NMCD091 (9/04) Simpson

Symphony No 11. Variations on a Theme of Carl Nielsen

CLS / Taylor

Hyperion

CDA67500 (A/04)