Mark-Anthony Turnage is a not very interesting composer whose aesthetic resembles the style of other pop-music influenced musicians like Torke or Daugherty, though without the former’s melodic gift or the latter’s sense of humor. Indeed, the characterization of the opening of Silent Cities, “Nagging and obsessive,” might apply to all four works included here. Not even the committed attentions of the likes of Leonard Slatkin, crack percussionists Evelyn Glennie and Peter Erskine, and trombone virtuoso Christian Lindberg relieve the music of its dogged dullness.
Thick orchestration (the opening of Four-Horned Fandango is marked “Murky”, as if that description didn’t apply generally) and excessive textural busyness frame episodes presenting insipid melodic material, so much so that there’s little differentiation from one work to the next. Another Set To, for trombone and orchestra, sounds much the same as Silent Cities, and only the percussion solos of Fractured Lines intrude on the music’s pervasive, dynamically challenged monotony, being just as dynamically challenged but a tad less monotonous. Granted, the composer’s seriousness is never in doubt: it’s his sheer talent that’s questionable. A disc to avoid.
