A couple of Christmases ago I recommended in this column an exceedingly unfestive offering: Torsten Rasch’s song cycle/symphony Mein Herz brennt with its lacerating mix of heavy-metal pop and late romantic/early modern orchestral intensity, whose music wholly transcended the callow protest of its lyrics in unforgettable excoriation.
This year, something at the opposite end of the expressive gamut: something charged with those rarest of qualities in the contemporary arts — joy, exuberance, happiness, delight, celebration, ecstasy; and all these without anything cheap or dumbed-out into puerility. To achieve such wide-eyed freshness without reneging upon a sophisticated modernist idiom and technique is already a paradox, and Julian Anderson’s music turns it into a triumph. Forty next year, his first representation on CD has been long delayed. Now come two simultaneously (Julian Anderson: Book of Hours and other pieces [NMC D121]; Alhambra Fantasy and other pieces [Ondine ODE 1012-2]) which together yield some two and a half hours of pleasure.
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