Steve Elcock: Orchestral Music, Volume Four – Kenneth Woods

Steve Elcock – UK-born (in 1957) but based in France – was recently hailed by a fellow composer in the American magazine Fanfare as ‘the greatest living symphonist’. All eleven of the symphonies he has composed to date are, in various ways, concerned with the large-scale accumulation and dissipation of tension, rather in the manner of the later Nielsen symphonies – the half-hour span of his Fourth Symphony also reconciling tonality and atonality in its wild and energetic arch. Elcock is fond of bringing popular elements into his music, and a folk-like dance duly animates his Viola Concerto. These major works are book-ended here by two big-hearted orchestral showpieces that could become audience favourites.