Peter Racine Fricker: Symphonies 1-4 – Bryden Thomson

   in Classical Music (Nov, 2017)
This is an important release of four of Peter Racine Fricker’s five symphonies in off-air recordings from 1980.

Born in Ealing, Fricker studied with Seiber and taught at the RCM before moving to California. His musical voice is deliciously spicy, influenced by Bartók, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. This piquancy leads to hyper-emotive slow movements (Symphonies 1 and 3), but is also felt in the more active ‘Tableau and Dance’ of the First (no missing the Bartók flavour). Thomson is a confident director of the First, as he is of the craggy Rondo Scherzino. The Second is interesting in being comprised of three equal-length but contrasted rondo-derived movements. Albert Rosen, who also directs …