Carl Vine

In all his music, Carl Vine’s appeal to the senses is immediate, and his ability to leaven tough, sinewy textures with attractive melodic material has guaranteed his work a wide, appreciative audience of listeners. Vine was born in 1954 in Perth, Australia, and in the early part of his career wrote many scores for dance and ballet companies. The strongly rhythmic style which Vine developed fed into the sequence of five symphonies he wrote from 1986-95: these are sharply propulsive works whose tight structures and flinty orchestration recall Sibelius. A similarly trenchant, visceral approach to musical communication pervades Vine’s string quartets and piano sonatas. The finale of String Quartet No. 3 is typical in its Bartók-like ferocity, although the work’s slow central section is a reminder that Vine is also capable of movingly lyrical writing. The piano sonatas have similar moments of reflective introspection, but are consistently thrilling in their blistering virtuosity.