Though John McCabe’s 1994 Symphony No. 4, subtitled “Of Time and the River”, is in two movements, it’s made up of five sections that flow from one to the next. The music is similar in style to Michael Tippett’s, particularly his Symphony No. 4, with its presentation of seemingly disparate episodes that return throughout the work, giving it a sense of motivic, if not thematic unity. However, McCabe’s musical ideas, despite their austerity, don’t ring with the same explosive originality and audacity inherent in those of Tippett–who after all was a singular genius at that sort of thing. Rather, the piece has an arid quality reminiscent of the compositions of Nicolas Maw.
The Flute Concerto (1989) is another matter entirely. Here the materials are brightly lit and highly colored. The work’s tension-filled opening (with wonderfully pregnant pauses), leads into music of arresting variety, including an exotic middle section that contains haunted echoes of Khachaturian’s transcripted Flute Concerto. Emily Beynon tackles the challenging solo part with virtuosic flair, clearly having mastered all of McCabe’s demandingly athletic passages. Vernon Handley has both the Concerto and Symphony firmly within his grasp, and the BBC Symphony makes a strong case for both works. With Hyperion’s demonstration-class sound, this becomes a disc well worth investigating.
