Colin Currie Records
NOW returned to Scotland and living in suburban Glasgow, star percussionist Colin Currie has used the recent hiatus in performance opportunities to start his own label. This release brings together two recordings made by the BBC, one in the BBC Phil’s Manchester home at the Bridgewater Hall with Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena, the other a world premiere at the 2015 Proms with Finn John Storgards on the podium.
Heinz Karl Gruber is a composer who divides opinion. Also an orchestral double bassist, he has maintained a performing career as a baritone “chansonnier” (his preferred designation) after starting his musical life as a member of the Vienna Boys Choir in the 1950s. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King join his own Frankenstein!! in his theatrical repertoire, and that is far from irrelevant to the music of his works for percussion.