DIRK BROSSÉ (b.1960): UGent? Me2!, DNA in Music, Death, In Memoriam Shostakovich, The Secret of the Mystic Lamb, Keep Moving, In Motu, In Memoriam Avicii, The Pulse of Joy.

Description: Brossé is a multi-talented conductor-composer widely known for conducting "pops"-type concerts and film music, although he has written a wide range of original music for the concert hall as well as stage, screen and TV. Working in an instantly accessible tonal idiom his music ranges from serious in intent and execution to energetic, crowd-pleasing "crossover" works. In this latter mode he favors pulsating post-minimalistic textures and very consonant harmony, that easily appeal to a "non-classical" audience - In Motu and Keep Moving exemplify this approach. His breadth of inspiration and appeal is demonstrated by the two "In Memoriam" pieces here; for Avicii (Tim Bergling), a Swedish electro-pop musician who committed suicide at 28, and for Shostakovich. The former is a plaintive, melodic piece with a pulsing rhythmic accompaniment in its outer sections; the latter a more standard piece of concert music with a lamenting theme and echoes of the Russian composer’s vocabulary, though as with the other somewhat larger piece here, The Secret of the Mystic Lamb (inspired by the Ghent Altarpiece), film scores of the John Williams type are never far away. The same is true of UGent? Me2!, an exuberant overture for the 200th anniversary of Ghent University, which has something of the character of many wind orchestra pieces of this type (a medium in which Brossé also has experience); sumptuous, bombastic and melodic. The Pulse of Joy is an exuberant "crossover" overture borrowing the thudding insistent rhythm of a kick drum from the world of EDM (Electronic Dance Music) and dressing it up in post-minimalist garb, with Nymanesque harmonies. Brussels Philharmonic; Dirk Brossé.