Gävle Symfoniorkester & Jaime Martín - Vito Palumbo: Three Concertos (2018)

The genesis of this recording was Dan Laurin’s idea to commission a concerto for recorder and symphony orchestra. He had performed a number of such works already, but felt that the new, more powerful ‘Eagle’ recorder developed by the maker Adriana Breukink could help with avoiding the usual problems with balance between soloist and orchestra. Having interested the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in the project, he then approached the Italian composer Vito Palumbo – and the ball was set in motion!

In 2013, after an intense collaboration between composer and soloist, the concerto was finished – a single movement almost thirty minutes long, and according to Laurin ‘by far the most difficult piece I have ever encountered’. The ‘Eagle Concerto’ is here coupled with two earlier concertante works by Palumbo, featuring Dan Laurin’s close chamber music partners, harpsichordist Anna Paradiso and cellist Mats Olofsson.

All three works differ greatly in style, forming a complex portrait of the composer. Palumbo himself describes the lightly scored Concerto Barocco as ‘a reappropriation of the baroque style’, while the large-scale Cello Concerto is intended as a tribute to Shostakovich. The Recorder Concerto, finally, is in the words of its creator ‘a large poetic fresco that to my mind is truly operatic’.