David Hackbridge Johnson: Orchestral Music, Volume Two

The orchestral music of the English composer David Hackbridge Johnson (b. 1963) is one of the most important discoveries to have been made by Toccata Classics. This second volume brings two mighty symphonies: the dark and tragic No. 10 (2013), cast in a single monumental span, and the three-movement No. 13 (2017), a fierce and fiery affirmation of life. They are complemented here by an orchestral ‘motet' which passes plainchant in kaleidoscopic review. Writing in Gramophone, Guy Rickards said of Hackbridge Johnson's Ninth Symphony: ‘what is so astonishing is not his ambition in attempting such large, big boned structures […] but that he possesses the compositional technique to achieve them so completely. [...] This is a profound, complex and visionary utterance'.