46. Crespo Series
In their biography the Pacific Quintet quote Bernstein: ‘This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before’. Their performance will bear out this fine ambition with four virtuoso works, three French, one English, beginning with Ibert’s joyful miniature with its electrifying opening. ‘The Naming of Birds’ by Sally Beamish takes six birds once common in English farmland and pairs each bird with a particular instrument, partridge/horn, lapwing/oboe, linnet & corn bunting/flute & piccolo, barn owl/bassoon, bullfinch/clarinet. André Jolivet and Henri Tomasi were 20th century French composer. Jolivet took the exceptional view that his music was an affirmation of non-conformism and strove to give back to music its ancient magical and incantatory expression. Tomasi was born in Marseille of Corsican parents and developed a language inseparable from Mediterranean civilization: sensorial, multi-coloured, a fabric of light and shade and vibrant with melodies.
