A 1981 review of her Viola Sonata called it a "thoughtful, well constructed piece" from a relatively obscure composer; a 1985 review noted its "emotional intensity and use of dark tone colours".
He still sings about London, and in 2014 even released two albums about it: The Tyburn Tree (Dark London) with composer, John Harle, and a live recording of Ten Plagues, about London after the Great Fire, written by Mark Ravenhill.
"Zero Dark Thirty" — Alexandre Desplat, composer.
In the dark edgy "The Composer's Lover", we hear that "We had an hour without music./A nerve brightly turning in the closed room of the mind".
In an appearance with the Philharmonique, which he has led since 2000, Chung plays to his strengths, leading Ravel's childlike "Mother Goose," the same composer's dark and grownup Concerto for the Left Hand (with Vladimir Feltsman), and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring".
Although van Zweden is best known for his accounts of symphonies in the Beethoven-to-Shostakovich line, he has shown interesting taste in new music: he was the first big-league conductor to take up the orchestral works of John Luther Adams, presenting that composer's "Dark Waves" in Amsterdam and Chicago.
The kidnapping makes just the kind of dark, unlikely subject that composers working in the spirit of Kander & Ebb like to tackle.
This disc, with Viktoria Mullova playing five of his violin concertos with the period ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, is an impressive issue, suggesting a darker side to a composer whom some still consider to be primarily a purveyor of entertaining diversions.
Being a woman (and having high hair) has made me easier to recognize, easier to remember and has spared me from fitting into the generic description of a composer: "medium build, dark hair, glasses, beard".
1. LIGHT AND SHADOW -- Harrison Birtwistle's "Shadow of Night," commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra, is a study in the melancholic, conceived with what is -- for this composer and this dark subject -- astonishing lightness and fluency.
