Martin Suckling: This Departing Landscape

Chronique

It's still rare that a recording of contemporary music from a specialist label in the field hits classical music sales charts, but this NMC release of music by Martin Suckling has done so, and hearers will quickly understand why. The physical album benefits from elegant notes (available on the Chandos website) by Julian Anderson and the composer himself; these together give an excellent introduction to the music of this composer who, as of 2021, had just entered his 40s. Anderson quotes Rainer Maria Rilke to the effect that music is an "audible landscape," and the phrase is indeed apropos for Suckling's music. Suckling writes of Release that "[i]t’s hard to resist, I find, when in a large space, the urge to clap or shout or sing and listen to the sound bounce around and decay. In one sense, that is all there is to this piece, with the orchestra taking the role of both impudent child and cathedral," and although the music is not tonally oriented, even the most conservative of listeners will have to yield to a smile at the way this idea is realized. The five-movement Piano Concerto is likewise immensely appealing, with the usual heroic role of the piano replaced by an instantly accessible structure in which the instrument launches the action, so to speak. The flute concerto The White Road and the orchestral This Departing Landscape are similarly evocative. The music receives clean, sympathetic performances from the BBC Scottish Symphony and BBC Philharmonic under Ilan Volkov, and the album seems likely to stir wider interest in Suckling's music.

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