Forest, Tansy Davies’s thrilling new concerto for four horns, received its US premiere in April with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the New York Philharmonic and soloists who premiered it: Richard Watkins, Katy Wooley, Nigel Black and Michael Thompson. After the world premiere by the Philharmonia Orchestra in February, The Guardian described the 20-minute work as ‘teeming with energy’.
Pitting a quartet of soloists against a vast tapestry of orchestral sound, Forest is one of Davies’s most vivid and ambitious musical statements to date. Forest now travels to the Warsaw Autumn Festival in September, where it will be performed by the original soloists and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Liebreich.
REVIEWS
‘The bigger novelty on display turned out to be Forest a loud concerto for four — count ’em, four — horn virtuosos. It delivered nearly half an hour of flamboyant tootling around and above a rather cacophonic symphonic tapestry.’
The Financial Times (Martin Bernheimer), 30 April 2017
‘The orchestral writing is reminiscent of Péter Eötvös, an alluringly blended sound of great plasticity that appears to throb and breathe like a living organism. [Solo] lines rarely stand out clearly, but seem partly obscured by the orchestral texture, much in the way moving objects in a forest are perceived in flashes behind branches and foliage… The music maintains a poetic tension throughout.’
The New York Times (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim), 28 April 2017