‘Pieces that Disappear’ Reviews
My album Pieces that Disappear was released in November on NMC Recordings, and it has been featured in a number of reviews.
It features four pieces, all performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Beautiful Caged Thing and After Lassus (both with soprano Anna Dennis), Three Pieces that Disappear, and Pleasure Garden, with violinist Daniel Pioro.
Some quotes:
Strikingly rooted and assured…Tom Coult’s distinctive voice comes through vividly on this celebration of his time at the BBC Philharmonic…it demonstrates Coult’s ability to write music that’s texturally rich yet strikingly translucent.
That’s true whether he’s writing for voice or for violin, as we hear in his 2021 concerto Pleasure Garden, conducted by Elena Schwarz with Daniel Pioro the eloquent soloist. Then there’s After Lassus, again gleamingly sung by Dennis: a homage to the Renaissance composer that begins with Swingle-ish vocalisations and includes a louche cabaret-style movement. It brings to mind the way Mahler used Austrian country dances in his music, creating rootedness and a benign melancholy.
Indeed, the last of 2023’s Three Pieces that Disappear…at first seems to hover somewhere between Mahler’s Ninth and Purcell. Coult then weaves in a 1951 recording of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, itself based on Handel. That’s a lot of nostalgia for one piece. Yet the result is characteristically moving and never overwritten. These aren’t pieces that disappear, not at all.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
‘A wonderful album of his orchestral music…it’s all music that sticks to your memory – with a uniquely sensual soundworld, in which its ideas are in a constant state of changing and moulding’
Tom Service, BBC Radio 3 Music Matters
‘Coult’s orchestral voice is already distinctive…it’s an excellent showcase for Tom’s Coult’s music – seriously enjoyable…it’s called ‘Pieces that Disappear’ – I hope they don’t’
Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3 Record Review
‘Throughout, Coult’s command of his orchestral palate is devastating and his writing for soloists Anna Dennis and Daniel Pioro highly seductive.
All three [movements of Three Pieces that Disappear] demonstrate a dazzling but not showy use of the orchestral palate…it is the way Coult effortlessly welds everything into a magically engaging whole, one that makes the whole orchestra his music box.
The second movement [of Beautiful Caged Thing], ‘Monstrous Marionettes’ is a scene between and woman and a man, though any drama is approached sideways and it is the colours in the orchestra that make the piece striking. ‘I am tired of myself tonight’ is about world weariness and Dennis gives us a lovely seductive and sinuous line that is both laid back and profoundly expressive.
[In After Lassus] Coult remains resolutely himself, evocative and mysterious…it is the combination of Dennis’ seductive line and the colours and timbres of Coult’s orchestra that register most. Perhaps there is Lassus here, but there is a lot else besides from Villa Lobos to RVW to jazz, Coult seems to find his imagination freed by having a structure to hang things from…The final movement ‘Sancti Mei’ is magical, with Britten’s Prince of the Pagodas vying with Ravel’s Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes along with Dennis hauntingly intoning plain chant.
Mad, magical and mesmerising.’
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Three Pieces that Disappear] has a confident monumentality, and the brass band-style chorale in the final movement, which dissolves and deflates into an audio sample of Schoenberg, is extremely moving. This is perhaps my favourite piece across the three albums, and certainly one I will come back to with pleasure.
Beautiful Caged Thing and After Lassus are both showcases for the extraordinary soprano Anna Dennis, who weaves a lyrical spell in the first, and in the second channels a more early-music vein as Coult reworks duets by my favourite 16th century composer…the scoring is delicate and chamber-like, allowing Dennis to float effortlessly above, in lines that gradually go from the improvisatory to the fully formed to the flat-out jazzy. Like Three Pieces That Disappear, it packs an emotional punch that makes it very rewarding listening
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk
There is something ominous about the debut album from Tom Coult. Across four works, he takes us to darkly dramatic places with his expressive writing and playful textures.
The title track, Three Pieces that Disappear, wistfully explores concepts of memory and imagination…The effects here are an almost eerie sense of the instruments of the orchestra meandering around one another, with the music working itself out listlessly as the piece progresses.
Inspired by lines from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, [Beautiful Caged Thing] sees Dennis’s bird-like soprano shimmer over the surface of the orchestra, who support with a playful, yet disarming tapestry of responses. The rhythmic vocals are in constant interplay with the orchestra: this is Coult’s writing at its most expansive and dramatic.
Freya Parr, BBC Music Magazine
[The BBC Philharmonic] on this disc, under three different conductors, prove themselves comfortable with and attentive to the needs of his enticing sound world.
After Lassus…is a highly effective addition to the repertoire. There are some wonderful touches of orchestration paying homage to the old, but very much of the present day. Section 4 is full of surprises! Miss Dennis has a wonderfully rich and seductive tone.
She is once again the soloist in Beautiful Caged Thing. I reviewed a live performance of the work by Philippa Boyle in June’s issue, and it is every bit as effective here.
The 2020/23 violin concerto Pleasure Garden was composed for Daniel Pioro who is an ardently eloquent soloist here with Elena Schwarz conducting. The three movements take inspiration from various images and stories about constructed ‘natural spaces’ in and around cities throughout the globe. While it is in no sense travelogue music, the last movement, inspired by Japanese rock gardens, is quite magical in its subtle evocation of a Japanese landscape and instruments.
This is one of those discs that NMC do so well, a wonderful selection box of works by a composer who deserves to be more well known.
Paul RW Jackson, British Music Society