JUSTIN CONNOLLY (b.1933): Verse for 8 Soloists, Op. 7b (John Alldis Choir), Triad III for Oboe, Viola and Cello, Op. 8 (Vesuvius Ensemble), Cinquepaces for Brass Quintet, Op. 5 (Philip Jones Brass Ensemble), Poems of Wallace Stevens I for Soprano and 7 Instruments, Op. 9 (Jane Manning [soprano], Nash Ensemble; Justin Connolly).

Description: Connolly was a slower developer as a composer than a number of his distinguished British contemporaries born in the 1930s; his first published work dates from 1964, by which time he had essayed and abandoned strict serialism. All the music on this disc is from the 1960s, and was fairly new when this recording was originally made, and is in a free, individual idiom, employing some gestures of the theatrical avant garde of the time while retaining a formal concision and precision of technique. It is clear that by the time he started producing pieces that he acknowledged as part of his mature body of work, his compositional resources were broad and his craftsmanship impeccably developed. T he choral pieces incorporate ingenious illustrative vocal effects to underline the vivid texts; the chamber work consists of a series of eloquent and varied dialogues between instruments, always of exemplary clarity and instrumentally idiosyncratic. The brass quintet alternates movements of great freedom in rhythms and pitch with dynamically virtuosic dances, robust and harmonically pungent. The exhilarating songs to poems of Wallace Stevens employ a strikingly wide range of coloristic effects, both for soloist and ensemble, sharing with Verse a powerful sense of word-painting through musical texture. Original1972 LP release.