Composer Oliver Davis’ music teems with energy and joy, the flavors of jazz, folk, and film music coloring his elegantly crafted scores. The ravishing opening suite, Spiral, is a voyage through his influences, its final movement a riotous, Copland-esque hoedown. “Bacchus” is a delightful, mischievous work for pizzicato strings while Liberty takes us from the salons of 18th-century Vienna to the rustic outdoors. The haunting, driving “Lost Lake,” featuring a fiendish, arpeggiated violin part, precedes Chillingham, a setting of poems by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge that uses gorgeous, multilayered vocal effects.
- Anne Akiko Meyers, Akira Eguchi, Philharmonia Orchestra & Kristjan Järvi
- Bryden Thomson, London Philharmonic Orchestra & Skaila Kanga
- Yo-Yo Ma, The Knights & Eric Jacobsen
- Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, European Opera Centre & Vasily Petrenko
- Grace Davidson, Kerenza Peacock & Trafalgar Sinfonia
- Donald Fraser, English Symphony Orchestra & English Chamber Orchestra