Helen Grime

A Cold Spring evokes primordial creatures bellowing from the murk, with characterful solos for the lower wind instruments.

...the middle movement is described by Grime as a mini concerto for the solo horn, and BCMG horn player Mark Phillips evidently enjoyed it. But the concertante element was there too in an exuberant duet for the clarinets in the first part, and the flying sequence of juxtaposed solos and duets in the last part. It felt like a condensed concerto for orchestra, or rather a sort of ‘Concertino for Chamber Group’

…Certainly the revival of Helen Grime’s A Cold Spring (2009) was well deserved. Written for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and inspired by the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, a concertante aspect is often obliquely evident – horn emerging as ‘first among equals’ within the luminous central movement, whereas those on either side are both through-composed designs that draw on larger forces in an intensive yet dextrous interplay. Dextrousness was more than evident in this fine performance under the watchful guidance of Thierry Fischer….

… music of deft atmospheric detail.

Grime counts Oliver Knussen among her mentors and shares his eloquence, but her palette is all her own, weaving evocative, restless motives with cool insistence. She writes as though her music needs to be told...

A Cold Spring sounded as quietly ­distinctive as at its first outing at ­Aldeburgh last summer.