Mihkel Kerem: Orchestral Music Vol.2 – Andrew Manze

The Estonian composer Mihkel Kerem – born in Tallinn in 1981 and a Joint Assistant Leader in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015 – used the Covid lockdown to produce no fewer than four symphonies, two of them, his Seventh and Eighth, conceived as a contrasting pair. Kerem’s dark and ominous Seventh Symphony, like that of Sibelius, plots a huge sonata-form arch, growing from and back into its opening material. Its soundworld sits somewhere between Sibelius and Schnittke, combining a sense of natural symphonic growth with dramatic twists of kaleidoscopic textural variety. No. 8, which also nods to Sibelius’ Seventh by quoting its celebrated trombone theme, is a vast, unhurried accelerando, its three linked movements tapping into the Nordic–Baltic tradition of using the controlled power of the orchestra to suggest the vastness of nature.