This music is nasty. I mean, let’s face it: what can you expect from a violin concerto inspired by the emotions of “abject terror, grief, and loss”, and for the evocation of which Beamish sought the advice of that most happy fella of the British musical scene, Harrison Birtwhistle–pardon me, that’s Sir Harrison Birtwhistle? The result is ugly and miserable, naturally, with no particular reason that this needed to be a violin concerto at all. That said, the work represents an improvement on the First Symphony, which is also ugly and miserable, but generically so. The Violin Concerto at least reveals a bold personality (never mind whose).
The best piece here is Callisto, a flute concerto written in 2005 for the amazing Sharon Bezaly, who plays it as if it were great music and almost convinces us that it might be. The choice of flute as solo instrument inspires Beamish to employ a more colorful and distinctive aural palette, but she still needs to find a way to come up with memorable thematic material. This isn’t a matter of atonality vs. tonality. The Berg Violin Concerto, for example, is chock-full of distinctive ideas. Beamish is forgettable, even when tolerable. The performers, one presumes, do all that the music requires, and they are very well recorded; but will anyone want to listen to this more than once, if they even get that far? I think not.
