MUSICAL POINTERS:
Before hearing this CD, David Gorton 's was a name completely unknown to me. He was a student recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2001 and he has built on this early success with commissions for the BBC SO ( The Fall of Babel ) and London Sinfonietta ( Oblique Prayers ) as well as a series of solo and chamber works for some of the UK's very best new music performers.

After hearing this beautiful CD, I am keen to discover much more of Gorton's music. As represented here, in works written for the Kreutzer Quartet and its members, as well as a piece for piano trio, Melting Forms , it seems to me lyrical without being soft, complex without being threatening, cool without being cold. It is intricately crafted, but it wears its intelligence lightly. The ‘Introduction' to the cello sonata (here given in both studio and live recordings, with reordered movements according to the work's mobile form) suggests early Ferneyhough with its jagged opening volley of pizzicati, but quickly a counterpoint of calm, Feldmanian harmonics is introduced, and the outlines of a dialogue soon appear. With similar ease the contrasting sounds of ‘Reflection', each trying to pull in opposite directions from one another, coalesce at the end of the movement into their own little constellation, slowly rotating in the hold of each other's gravity. Such casual, confident emergences of form are typical of Gorton's writing.

Two Caprices for violin are extravagantly virtuosic, but the CD's real substance is in the chamber pieces, Melting Forms and the string quartet Trajectories . The former takes the mobile approach of the cello sonata further: the players are free to choose their own routes through the piece and in their relationships to one another. In this performance, the music seems like an old book, whose pages are slowly coming free of their binding: on the fragile cusp between alignment and disarray.

Trajectories allows other sorts of unpredictability into the music. It was commissioned by Tate St Ives and written with its large gallery spaces in mind, so that the players may be ‘installed' at wide distances apart from one another around the performing space. This necessitates a music that is not dependent on strict coordination between the players: Gorton writes in long tones that slowly unfold in counterpoint with one another. But this does not mean that he has abandoned his characteristic interest in intense local detail: microtonal tuning is used throughout and, as they shift and slide over one another, the sustained tones create acoustic ‘beats', a hidden world of activity behind the surface. As it proceeds, the music almost imperceptibly rises towards this higher, more ethereal realm, moving from a world of sombre consideration to transcendent ecstasy. 
Tim Rutherford-Johnson

MIDWEST RECORD:
Contemporary classical is alive and well in England as this composer struggles to make complex pieces palatable. This recording, supervised by the composer, is loaded with music that seems difficult to play but certainly rewards the listener for sticking with it. The centerpiece of this collection is a cello sonata, given a two readings, each with a different spin that should open the ears. Between them are some caprices that hold the intensity of the core. A pretty solid bet for the classical malcontent that wants to chart some new waters.
Chris Spector

**note: to be fair, we print all reviews, good and bad. These are, after all, subjective opinions! We hope customers look beyond the reviewer's personal tastes where stated - as in the following review - and assess whether the music is for them. L R Bayley is one of our favourite reviewers and we accept she doesn't like this - maybe someone else should have reviewed... but it's interesting she recommends Segerstram (who I never heard of actually), and notes that 'his music was damned by the critics at the time' . We expect in the future someone will say the same about Ms Bayley's critique of Gorrton's work! - Stephen Sutton, Divine Art

FANFARE:
Those who follow my reviews know that I always try to be fair to new music, if for no other reason than every modern composer marches to the beat of his or her own drummer, but I have to confess that the music of David Gorton (b. 1978) struck me as a cipher at first and as an unlovable enigma after I became more familiar with his aesthetic.

The first thing one hears at the opening of his Cello Sonata is a violent pizzicato, a few isolated, whiny, out-of-tune notes, then more atonal percussive sounds, bowing on the edge of the strings and other similarly bizarre effectives. The out-of-tune sounds are not accidental. Gorton has instructed the cellist to tune the G string a third of a tone flat and the A string a third of a tone sharp. (What would happen in live performance if atmospheric conditions affect the pitch of these or other strings is a matter of conjecture. I doubt if anyone would notice.) Even when the cellist holds notes, and this appears to be a Big Thing for Gorton, long-held notes (we'll get to that later), the effect seems to be purely ambient and not designed for actual listening enjoyment. The music makes some sense, but not much. It is purposely fragmented because, as annotator Simon Shaw-Miller puts it, Gorton “has a short attention span.” Shaw-Miller sees this as a virtue, meaning “music that changes moment by moment,” but in the end Gorton is merely playing head games with his listeners. For me, mind games are not music.

The string quartet Trajectories is yet another head game. The first movement, which runs almost 12 minutes, consists entirely of long-held notes in abrasive microtonal harmonies. There is one outburst of violent musical effluvium at the beginning of the second movement; otherwise the entire quartet is a series of long-held notes in abrasive pitch clashes. You may find this sort of thing wonderful and stimulating. I find it silly at best. In the alternate live performance, the movements are played in a different order. It doesn't make much difference.

The first caprice for solo violin is busy and annoying, but mercifully brief (1:24). The second caprice I found to be the one bearable piece on the entire CD, a playful series of lightly played triplets that dance across the strings. Melting Forms , a trio for violin, cello, and piano, had to my ears, the exact same form and procedure as the Cello Sonata only for three instruments instead of one. The tinkling piano interjections add a little variety of sound. In the middle of the piece, however, at about the six-minute mark, there is an interesting, explosive passage that put me in mind of the wonderful music that Leif Segerstam wrote in the late 1960s and 1970s, music that was damned by critics at the time and rarely heard today. The final section of Melting Forms is simply an extension of Trajectories except with a piano in the mix. Apparently, Gorton's short attention span leads him to forget that he already wrote the same thing earlier.

Despite my dislike of the music, one can only marvel at the dedication and precision of the musicians. Both violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved and cellist Neil Heyde are in fact members of the Kreutzer Quartet, and they are virtuosos of the first rank. The notes make a big fuss of the fact that Gorton's music is meant to b e visual. Apparently, when performed live, the quartet sits around the audience. Perhaps, in the sonata, the cellist flips his bow in the air the way Lionel Hampton flipped his vibes mallets and drumsticks. I'm not impressed. Music is meant to be heard, not watched. If you want to watch a performance, go see a mime. If you want to hear truly great modern music that engages the emotions as well as the mind, investigate some of those Segerstam originals. You won't be sorry.
Lynn René Bayley