Frances-Hoad - Stolen Rhythm

The Guardian 80

Phoenix Piano Trio/Rambert Orchestra/Hoskins
(Champs Hill)

It has mostly been Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s chamber music and choral works that have marked her out as one of the most distinctive voices in the well-stocked, thirtysomething generation of British composers. The latest disc of her music from Champs Hill, the third so far, turns the spotlight on her works for orchestra.

There are three orchestral pieces here. Two are concertos: the 2013 Katharsis, for cello and ensemble, a suite of six short, dance-like movements; and A Refusal to Mourn, an oboe concerto from 2000, revised in 2015, and based upon Lutheran chorales. In both, and in Quark Dances, written for a ballet by Rambert’s Mark Baldwin, Frances-Hoad’s implicit trust in the expressive power of her melodic invention and harmonic thinking is paramount.