DAI FUJIKURA (b.1977): Bassoon Concerto (Pascall Gallois [bassoon], Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony; Tatsuya Shimono), GÉRARD GRISEY (1946-1998): Talea for Flute, Clarinet and Piano Trio, LUCIANO BERIO (1925-2003): Requies for Chamber Orchestra.

Description: Fujikura's concerto is a twenty-five minute study in texture. A huge elaboration of his solo bassoon piece 'Calling', the work takes the bassoon material, amplifies it in the orchestra, and reflects it back to the soloist. Much of the solo part consists of multiphonic chords, the harmonic analysis of which provides the huge block chords played by the orchestra. The other component of the bassoon part is long melismatic melody lines, generally in a very high register, and these give rise to complex webs of overlapping lines in the orchestra, again passed back and forth with the soloist. The first texture predominates in the first section, the second in the following one, then the first reasserts itself as increasingly active and virtuosic bassoon music leads to ever greater surrounding orchestral variety. Finally the huge chords of the opening reassert themselves, the orchestra now galvanized into pulsating activity. Berio's intricately plaited skein of luminous melodic threads, composed in memory of Kathy Berberian, and Grisey's sonorous, exhaustive spectralist examination of the timbral possibilities of an overtone scale suggest where Fujikura's antecedents lie, some thirty years earlier. Prague Modern; Pascal Gallois.