Reviews - Review of Piano Concerto, "Storm" and Symphony no 1 from Records International.com
CHRISTOPHER GUNNING (b.1944): You would have to be a pretty unhappy specimen not to find something to enjoy on this disc. Gunning has a natural eloquence and a readily communicative style, doubtless honed by his extensive work in music for film and television. A Rubbra pupil, he shares with his teacher a gift for harmonic richness (in an unabashedly tonal idiom) combined with a clear, uncluttered directness of expression. One might also detect shades of Holst here and there, especially in the symphony. The fine piano concerto is conventional in form, with two lively outer movements – sometimes recalling neoclassical Stravinsky , or Shostakovich, but not sufficiently to strike one as derivative – bracketing a slow movement which plumbs greater emotional depths in an atmosphere of Busonian harmonic ambiguity and unease. Storm! is first cousin to the one in Peter Grimes, a tone-poem of graphic vividness. The symphony, an unbroken 25-minute expanse, explores different moods and the interplay of themes varies as the music progresses in a free and fairly loose structure, valuing vividness of image over formal strictness in a most appealing essay in the genre.
Olga Dudnik (piano),
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra; Christopher Gunning. Albany TROY 686
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