Peter Fribbins - Dances, Elegies and Epitaphs

The Guardian 80

Philippe Graffin (violin), Christopher Hart (trumpet), RSNO/Šervenikas
(Resonus)

This refreshing recording takes its name from the subtitle of Peter Fribbins’s concerto for violin and orchestra, a showcase for Philippe Graffin and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra that brims with vitality and clear, sinuous melody. Fribbins (b1969) takes Purcell’s Sonata in G minor as a starting point to reimagine the dance forms of one age for our own era. It’s an immediately engaging and satisfying addition to the violin repertoire. His In Xanadu for wind quintet is altogether more agitated and angular and yet no less absorbing for that, but it’s in his new Soliloquies for trumpet and strings, superbly played here by Christopher Hart, that Fribbins’s gift for long, searching and euphonious melody is most on display.