Baltimore SO/Alsop: Clyne, Abstractions album review Clyne writes accessible and attractive music

"Over the last couple of seasons, works by Anna Clyne seem to have been cropping up everywhere, with orchestras and ensembles eager to commission her, as they realise what strikingly attractive and accessible music she writes. Marin Alsop's fine disc offers a brief chronology of how Clyne has developed as an orchestral composer, from 2008's Within Her Arms, an elegy to her late mother, to the three movements, Yellow, Red, Orange, of Color Fields of 2020."

"Baltimore SO/Alsop: Clyne, Abstractions Within Her Arms, whose string writing seems close to Tippett's Corelli Fantasia at times, is impressively impassioned, but in each piece here Clyne's command of her material seems ever more assured and focused. Each of the five short movements of Abstractions of 2016, ranging from the urgently hyperactive to the dreamily impressionistic, was inspired by a work in the Baltimore Museum of Art, while the punchy Restless Oceans, which Clyne composed for Alsop in 2018, alternates brutal Stravinskyan insistence with moments of lyrical respite."

Anna Clyne has attracted frequent commissions because of strikingly attractive and accessible orchestral music. Marin Alsop's disc traces Clyne's development from 2008's Within Her Arms, an elegy to her late mother, to the three movements Yellow, Red, Orange of Color Fields (2020). Abstractions Within Her Arms features string writing that recalls Tippett's Corelli Fantasia and displays impassioned intensity alongside growing compositional focus. Abstractions (2016) comprises five short movements inspired by works in the Baltimore Museum of Art, spanning hyperactive to dreamily impressionistic moods. Restless Oceans (2018) alternates brutal, Stravinskyan insistence with lyrical respite, and the pieces are concise and well-paced.

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