In Transit - Vixen CD Review - Observer

VIC HOYLAND In Transit, Vixen
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbinse (NMC D072)

Perhaps Britain's most uncompromising label, NMC brings two major orchestral works from Vic Hoyland, reader in composition at Birmingham University. In transit, premiered at the 1967 Proms, bristles not only with the detail of Its orchestration, random notes being momentarily captured in the different light of other instruments, but in the strength of its erratic chromatic melodies. Vixen (1997) was written under the dual and related influences of the mathematical writings of the medieval Persian scholar ibn-Sina and the exterior of Mitterrand's Arab World Institute In Paris. Impressive writing - and fascinating listening- but not for the Classic FM crowd.