GRAMOPHONE:
Though his music has been widely heard in recent decades, Philip Grange has only a fine collection on Black Box as testament to one of the most distinctive minds of his generation. This release features three substantial works – including Cimmerian Nocturne (1979), a commission from the Fires of London reflecting Grange’s early association with Peter Maxwell Davies. Not that the piece sounds like his mentor; in its closely argued process around a central point of activity, strikingly direct and memorable gestures and transparent scoring that evokes an unquiet atmosphere, this is music whose creative instincts are undeniably personal.

Variations (1986) was another Fires commission and draws on variation as the means to attaining continuity through contrast. The three “variation cycles” unfold in parallel – ensuring an almost symphonic control of momentum over the three movements, with specific instruments assuming individual roles across a vivid yet abstract drama. Lament of the Bow (2000) takes its title from David’s sorrow on the death of Jonathan but is equally ‘pure’ music, its progress culminating in a processional where previously opposed elements are brought into a heightened and satisfying accord.

Finely prepared performances from Gemini and Ian Mitchell (their championing of a host of modern British composers is not to be underestimated), heard in a commendably natural ambience, and with Grange contributing the informative booklet note. Further discs of his music would be welcome.
Richard Whitehouse

TEMPO:
On coming into acquaintance with much of Philip Grange’s music, one is first of all struck by the sheer quality of it all, then puzzled that music so good isn’t better known. It may be that the reason for this is that Grange’s entire career, both as a student, and afterward, has taken place away from London: first as a student at York University, from which he received an undergraduate degree and a doctorate; then, as a fellow in the creative arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. Since when Grange has had a distinguished teaching career at the Universities of Durham, Exeter and Manchester, all the time producing quite a bit of music, all of it uniformly excellent.

Convicted of guilt by association, Grange’s music is often said to be like that of his mentor Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, with whom he studied several summers at the Dartington Hall Summer School; but, in fact, his music is closer in its harmonic and rhythmic workings to that of Elliot Carter, with which Grange has been preoccupied since his student days. However, just as he is not a Carl Philip Emmanuel Davies, he is also not some sort of Carl Philip Emmanuel Carter. Even though their musics have certain similar rhythmic procedures, those same procedures which in Carter’s music are used to make fluid and seamless transitions between constantly changing tempi, are deployed in Grange’s to maintain a sense of the simultaneous existence of contrasting and interpenetrating planes of tempo. Grange shares with both of those composers, though, a seriousness of intent and a sense of being one in a succession of devoted and serious practitioners of an art in whose meaningfulness and expressive power they have complete faith.

In his seven years in Davies’s composition class at the Dartington Summer School of Music, which involved writing pieces for reading by The Fires of London, Grange became very familiar with the ensemble and its instrumentation. His first major piece, Cimmerian Nocturne, came out of his association with the group, which commissioned it and gave it its first performance. This was his first piece to take a literary work, in this case Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as his starting point; not only does it share with the book its brooding atmosphere and its quality of veiled and increasingly less restrained violence, it also mimics the book’s journey towards a deeply intense central point and back out again. Variations , also written for The Fires six years later, derives its formal design of three cross-cut and cross-referencing variation cycles from William Golding’s novel Darkness Visible .

A few years after the dissolution of The Fires of London, Grange began an association with the group Gemini, which often times had the same instrumentation as the Fires, and which became the resident ensemble of the Music Department of the University of Exeter, where Grange taught. The Lament of the Bow , written in 2000 to satisfy a commission from the Contemporary Chamber Orchestra of Taiwan, who gave its first performance, takes its literary starting point from the biblical lament written by King David on the death of his friend Jonathan, and moves on to a consideration of grief an grieving as described by Freud in his essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. Gemini gave the first UK performances of The Lament of the Bow ,and added it to their repertory. Their recording of these three pieces on this Metier disc, conducted by Ian Mitchell, are powerful and magisterial, and vividly realize the darkly urgent and intense expression of each work.
Rodney Lister

THE SUNDAY TIMES:
Sometimes, an artist’s indebtedness is so manifest that one would have thought it disastrous – Pinter’s, say, to Beckett, Conrad’s (in Under Western Eyes) to Dostoevsky, or Knussen’s (in Where the Wild Things Are) to Ravel – yet he only seems to flourish the more. Such is the case with Grange and Maxwell Davies. Two of these works were written for the latter’s group The Fires of London, and the idiom of each is intimately bound up with Davies’s in his chamber-music heyday. Yet Cimmerian Nocturne (inspired by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), the fascinating triplicate Variations,, and Lament of the Bow have a power and drama quite their own. ×××
Paul Driver

MUSICWEB:
I used to think that Philip Grange, professor of music at Manchester University, was simply a protégé of Peter Maxwell Davies. PMD, now Master of the Queen’s Music, gave Grange his first opportunities when he was asked to compose for ‘The Fires of London’. In my naivety I also thought Grange’s work not unlike Davies’. Grange tells us in his informative notes which accompany the CD that he numbers amongst his teachers Alan Hacker at York. Hacker was the redoubtable clarinettist who gave the ‘Fires’ their sound ‘signature’. I changed my view of Grange as a PMD disciple a few years ago when I heard Grange’s fine Piano Trio (1995). Here, I thought, is a new voice, and an entirely arresting one and as unrelated to Maxwell Davies as possible. With this enterprising new CD my view has been developed further.

After the demise of the Fires in 1987, Grange was lucky to find the Gemini ensemble who not only often employ a similar instrumental line-up; in addition they are obviously understanding of his language and in sympathy with his sound-world. In two of these works Grange write the music for Gemini. He knows exactly how they ‘sound’ and they are completely on top of the music. They play these challenging works with confidence, with belief in the music and, under the composer’s supervision, authority. It is probably advisable to hear the pieces in the recorded order; the shortest first, One is immediately plunged into an enigmatic world but one so clearly realized and in which every detail is heard. The composer’s notes refer us to certain literary influences on these three works starting with ‘Cimmerian Nocturne’ which opens with a regularly repeated screeching piccolo. This was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ with its brooding and violent atmosphere. There is in the music, like the novella, a sense of journeying to a central dark point and then journeying back again.

Written when the composer was resident in Taiwan on a sponsored exchange, ‘Lament of the Bow’ takes its bow, as it were, from a Lament by the biblical King David on the death of Jonathan. It “tries to convey some of the emotions felt during grieving, as described by Sigmund Freud in his famous essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’”. It certainly has a keening quality and is processional in nature. The various contrasting elements of the piece are gradually reconciled.

The Variations, the longest work here, comes out of William Golding’s ‘Darkness Visible’ – hence the CD title. The composer is at pains to point out that the inspiration for any of these works is not the various plots or indeed any specific characters but the formal design of the literary source and the atmosphere engendered. The composer explains the form of Variations as “three variation cycles each of which is differently distributed among the three constituent movements”. The plan of advancing arguments towards a certain point and gradually combining the, comes from the development of Golding’s novel. In a conventional sense this is a set of variations on three themes.

If this sounds a bit much then it may be worth considering that when a composer writes his own programme notes what you invariably get is a view form over his shoulder in the workshop. You may not want this background detail but most composers feel that you need to know the exact inspiration sometimes for the sake of completeness, but also because it can for some listeners aid and engage their enjoyment and understanding of an unfamiliar language.

Metier is doing a terrific work on behalf of neglected contemporary British composes and here deliver a nicely balanced recording, That said, the volume control may have to up somewhat higher than usual. This is sometimes tough music but the disc comes with a highly recommended stamp from me to anyone patient enough to listen to fine performances of good contemporary music.
Gary Higginson