Anders Eliasson : Quo Vadis

   in Choir & Organ (Jan, 2012)
Eliasson’s music is always sui generis and this huge symphonic oratorio (or choral symphony) is unique in the modern canon. Eliasson has no patience with the extreme instrumentation of contemporary ‘spectral’ music. The orchestral palette wouldn’t have seemed alien to Brahms, but Eliasson’s ‘triangular’ harmony – which breaks with the cycle of fifths – delivers a sound that is at once texturally familiar and functionally alien. Lacking a text, Eliasson wrote 190 bars of orchestral score, all derived from a basic motive, before breaking off to concentrate on other work, including the great Trombone Concerto and the brilliant Sinfonia per archi, which is essentially a companion or shadow piece to this. …