From Amazon.co.uk
At a time when Schoenberg and Stravinsky were thought of as opposite poles, Roberto Gerhard was combining the density of the one with the dynamism of the other in a wholly personal synthesis. You can hear this in the Piano Concerto's mood swings from the dark and brooding to, in the finale, a Spanish take-off that Chabrier would have thought off the wall. Gerhard's 1960s music is in-your-face modernism that holds you in its grasp, embracing sound with an enthusiasm that remains inspirational today. Listen to the tape part of the Third Symphony--a cut-and-paste job that trounces most of the computer-music generation in its imagination and feeling for what's possible.
Epithalamion features material originally intended for, of all things, Lindsay Anderson's film
This Sporting Life. Not that its impact is any less than coherent; the percussion writing alone has a fantasy that will keep you entranced. Well prepared performances, superbly recorded. This is still music of the future.
--Richard Whitehouse
