Johnson: Orchestral Music Vol.4

David Hackbridge Johnson, born near London in 1963, is an all-round musician - not only a prolific composer but also a conductor, violinist, singer, pianist, jazz drummer and poet. Both works recorded here, under the baton of the composer, have extra-musical stimuli. The Piano Concerto evokes the Kafkaesque fantasy world and tragic fate of the Polish-Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz, a victim of Nazi oppression. The Symphony, taking its lead from earlier composers like Bax, Britten and Vaughan Williams is a response to the English landscape, as seen through the paintings of a number of artists whose work Hackbridge Johnson esteems - its colours and moods changing as kaleidoscopically as nature itself.