MacMillan: A Scotch Bestiary / Piano Concerto No. 2

James MacMillan has just won for the Classical Brit 'Best Contemporary Composer of the

Year' 2006 award with CHAN 10275 Symphony No.3 'Silence'.

Both works on this disc receive their world premiere recordings with this release.

This is an on-going series; the previous three discs were enthusiastically received.

James MacMillan is one of Britain's most successful and best-loved composers, with a high international profile.
Composed in 2004 as a specially commissioned ballet score for New York City Ballet, Piano Concerto No.2 comprises three movements: cumnock fair, shambards and shamnation. The work here receives its world premiere recording. It is a highly energetic work - a frenzy of folksong and dance; the first movement, cumnock fair, is a whirling fantasy of eighteenth-century Scottish dance melodies; shambards makes use of Burnsian folksong with fragments of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor drifting in and out of focus; shamnation is heavily influenced by Scottish folklore, often quite devilish. 'For sheer visceral excitement… this half-romp, half tantrum of a work is hot stuff', wrote the times.

A Scotch Bestiary was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Philharmonic to inaugurate the new organ in the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. This is a concertante work for organ (an instrument rarely used by contemporary composers) and orchestra, in two parts, and follows in a tradition of musical portraiture to which Elgar, Saint-Saëns and Mussorgsky have made significant contributions.
Reviews

'Review of A Scotch Bestiary: The piece was certainly fun: riotous, at times cacophonous, wittily orchestrated and cleverly structured. It also brilliantly integrated the organ into the orchestra proper. All these things and more merged in the work's second half, a crazy but exciting amalgram…'
Los Angeles Daily News