News

'… a wild, daring yet totally assured lighting of the blue touchpaper…'
The Times (Hilary Finch), 4 November 2001

'… a four-minute masterpiece of orchestral colour, as brilliant as anything in the repertoire …'

'… there are even some reminiscences of Feu d’Artifice [Stravinsky]  in Knussen’s riotous, five-minute score.  But these are subsumed into an orchestral texture that surpasses even Stravinsky in its luminous detail.'

'How well Knussen’s own Flourish with Fireworks picks up on the Stravinsky colours, while retaining its own poise and structure.'

'… explosive and delicate … a four minute deconstruction and reconstruction of Stravinsky’s early orchestral piece Fireworks…'

'… bustling and brilliant …'

'It’s occasional, intricate, teeming with layered ideas, fun, and festive.'

'Within the jumping crackers of percussion and the rockets of poly-rhythms are embedded cunning musical variations on the initials of the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas for whom this sparkler of an opener was written.'

'… a Stravinskyan romp in which the tumult of the instrumental flourishes created more busyness than light.'