Ensemble Detail(s)
Odense SO
Soloist(s)
Susanna Phillips
Conductor details
Scott Yoo
This is Volume 8 of the label's Ruders edition, and comprises a vocal-orchestral suite - Arias, Interludes and Postlude - from his dystopian Margaret Atwood opera. The Handmaid's Tale: Tundra, a five-minute homage to the Sibelius of Tapiola; and Symphony No 3 (2006) "Dreamcatcher". Tundra brilliantly reimagines the bleak, rarefied but brutal orchestral style of the Finn, insinuating what might be fleeting (certainly telling) quotations; while the two-movement symphony is pure Ruders, the opening adagio relentlessly sustained, the succeeding "Scherzo prestissimo" a 'tour de force' of energy and incandescence, the whole work seeming a single virtuoso flourish.
PD, The Sunday Times, Culture, 8/19/2012