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DCD34350-CD
£19.99
A harpsichord leading a string quartet in a juddering dance; Orpheus seeking passage into the underworld; a fantastical parade of images caricaturing musical Romanticism. The inspirations for these four pieces by Laurence Osborn range from the quirky and ironic to the deadly serious as they engage with and reflect on classical music’s heritage culture, the bold imaginative world of childhood, and the sometimes uncertain boundary between the mechanical and the human.
RPS Young Artist 2025 award winners GBSR Duo join the string soloists of 12 Ensemble in TOMB!, itself the winner of both an Ivor Novello Award and the RPS Award for Chamber-Scale Composition, while Mahan Esfahani is the virtuoso harpsichordist at the centre of Coin Op Automata.
'What these four works have in common is an involvement with the musical past that is often provocative and always engaging.
Such an involvement is duly exemplified by TOMB! (2022). This draws on the precedent of the ‘tombeau’ as a commemorative if essentially parasitic procedure (‘of homage becoming necromancy’, as Osborn puts it) for this interplay of historical forms that draws its ensemble into a continuous parade by turns enlightening and self-destructive, while ultimately negatory. A decidedly more affirmative sequence is that of Lakes, Mists, Bats, Daggers and Fountains (2023). The title taken from a disparaging description of Romanticism in a mid-19th-century Paris newspaper, its four movements encompass the lineage of the string quartet with music that enlivens this medium’s self-referential aspect through the deftest of classicising tendencies.
Its take on the musical past more playful, Me and 4 Ponys (2018) puts piano quartet through its paces in three sections whose focus on the repetitive, the unpredictable and the impulsive – tending towards pathos – feels apposite within the context of music directly influenced by the spontaneity and uninhibitedness of children’s drawings. Qualities pursued more obliquely in Coin Op Automata (2021), harpsichord goading string quartet into a rhythmically unyielding dance which makes for productive contrast with the disarming stylistic quodlibet that ensues.
These recordings by 12 Ensemble and associated musicians (Mahan Esfahani galvanising the repertoire for harpsichord as surely as is Sean Shibe that for the guitar) could not be bettered as to precision or commitment. It makes this release, with its vivid sound and detailed notes, essential for anyone at all concerned with music at this stage in the 21st century.'
'A séance with the dead, a satire on the living — Laurence Osborn's necromantic imagination produces one of the most arresting collections of new music in recent memory.
Here is a disc that will unsettle and beguile in equal measure, and listeners who approach it with an open mind will find themselves richly rewarded.
Laurence Osborn is a composer with a strong and distinctive voice—one that ranges from the arch and ironic to the deadly serious—and this collection of four pieces, engaging with classical music's heritage culture, the bold imaginative world of childhood, and the sometimes vertiginous boundary between the mechanical and the human, constitutes a powerful statement about where contemporary music can travel when it is in genuinely fearless hands.'
Collections: All Releases, Chamber, Contemporary, New Releases
Category: 12 Ensemble, Chamber, Clement Power, Concerto, Contemporary, GBSR Duo, Harpsichord, Laurence Osborn, Mahan Esfahani, Siwan Rhys, TOMB
