Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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MGV (Musique à Grand Vitesse) was written to commission for the opening of the TVG high-speed train line at Lille, which runs to Paris, but it doesn't play out like a typical "commission." MGV is grand, relentlessly rhythmic, and exciting music that rushes onward for a full half hour with only a couple of relatively quiet passages to allow for the listener to stretch his/her legs; "High Speed Music," as per its subtitle, indeed. Michael Nyman employs an interesting format in this piece, which is a sort of a concerto grosso with the small Michael Nyman Band serving as a ripieno and triggering off the material used in the orchestra, technically the "soloist." MGV is terrific driving music and easily appealing; the slight difference in intonation between the Nyman Band and the full orchestra leads to some interesting "bends" in the harmonic texture as MGV rounds a curve here and there.

Nyman's score for the Jane Campion film The Piano (1993) was so enormously popular that Nyman would have been undercapitalizing himself by not composing The Piano Concerto, essentially an extended concert paraphrase on his most famous film score. The genre of the piano concerto based on a film score is a necessarily English invention anyway, dating back to Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto. Kathryn Stott performs the solo part in this work, written for the most part in an easy, folk-like idiom in keeping with the source score Nyman contributed to the film, though the movement entitled "The Hut" is written in a glittering, virtuoso manner not possible for use in the film, as he was limited to composing just music that actress Holly Hunter could reasonably play on the set. This concerto might not appeal to hardcore Nyman fans that associate him most strongly with avant-garde minimalism, but it makes for a wisely planned and appealing Nyman disc to offer to the general public as a whole, and those same hardcore fans will find much to admire in MGV.

Review by Uncle Dave Lewis, Allmusic.com

Considering the international success of Jane Campion's film The Piano and the healthy number of copies its soundtrack album (Virgin, 8/94) has sold, it seems quite logical that Nyman should adapt his celebrated score into a concert piece. Liberated from the necessary restrictions and demands of the film's narrative, this ''reconsideration of the film soundtrack'', as Nyman describes it, has allowed the composer to build the numerous, often brief cues that make the original album a little dissatisfying into a far more cohesive structure. He has also used a much larger orchestra than would have been appropriate in the film, with the piano part not only elaborately refashioned but also conceived as a member of the orchestra rather than a spotlit star (a point recognized by the tight, well-balanced recording).

Though performed uninterrupted, the 32-minute concerto is divided into four clear-cut sections and more or less follows the presentation of the music as heard on the Virgin album. The Scottish folk-songs on which much of the score is based (the haunting main theme, for example, entitled ''The heart asks pleasure first'' on the soundtrack disc, derives from Bonny winter's noo awa) imbue the piece with a yearning, heartfelt quality not usually associated with this composer. Indeed, the whole concerto, as so convincingly advocated by Kathryn Stott and the RLPO, throbs with an unbridled romantic fervency (the second movement and the end of the third almost Rozsa-like in their ardour) that may come as something of a shock to hardened Nymanites or those who appreciate the less grandiose scoring for the film. As for me, I loved every minute of it!

More recognizably Nymanesque is MGV, a sort of Pacific 231 for the 1990s, composed for the inauguration of the TGV North-European line in France. Here the composer's abstract style is eminently suited to describing a non-stop, imaginary railway journey through five regions between Paris and Lille; his repeated phrases and chugging, insistently propulsive rhythms create an effect that is totally spellbinding, with the strings adding an especially effective sense of speed and visual sweep. A rewarding disc that will appeal to Nyman fans old and new.'

Review by Gramophone

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Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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Royal Liverpool PO, Kathryn Stott, Michael Nyman Band - Michael Nyman: The Piano Concerto; MGV (1994)

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