During his years as Music Director of the British Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Zehetmair was noted both for introducing compelling new music to the repertoire and for his insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording of The Sage, Gateshead.
The album opens with the double concerto That Subtle Knot of John Casken written in 2012-3 for Zehetmair, Ruth Killius et la Northern Sinfonia. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, the composition establishes a wide arc between the English Renaissance and the music of today. Ruth Killius shines in a revealing interpretation of the Concerto for viola of Bartókand Zehetmair, as conductor, brings out fully what liner note writer Giselher Schubert describes as “the juggernaut’s propulsive thrust” of the Symphony No. 5 of Beethoven.