Katherine Bryan - Robin Stevens: Orchestral Music, Vol. 3

The compositional career of Robin Stevens (1958-2026), Welsh-born and Manchester-based, was divided into two periods, separated by a period of illness. The first produced mainly chamber music and works for the church that employed him; restored to health (briefly, as it transpired), he found an appetite for larger forms, writing three substantial concertos and a number of other orchestral works. The tone-poem Mourning into Dancing was his first for large orchestra, but he handles the medium with virtuosic assurance, generating a wildly exciting showpiece, a kaleidoscope of colour and rhythm. Stevens never lived to complete the symphony he had in mind, but his expansive, four-movement Viola Concerto is symphonic in outline, with the viola soloist both initiating and commenting on the action-rather like a distant cousin of Berlioz's Harold en Italie. The more modest Concert Rondo for flute and small orchestra provides light relief between these two mighty scores.