Julian Anderson - Alhambra Fantasy (2006)

This disc represents Julian Anderson's much-awaited recording début, featuring the première recordings of five of his most important works to date. Diptych (1990) was his first acknowledged work; it won the 1992 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Young Composers and was subsequently nominated as the BBC entry in the 1996 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Anderson's two commissions for the London Sinfonietta, Khorovod (1994) and Alhambra Fantasy (2000), have been widely performed by leading ensembles across Europe and the USA. His other most played works include the orchestral BBC Proms commission The Stations of the Sun (1998). A terrifying poem by W.B. Yeats, as well as the experience of a lunar eclipse in March 1996 gave the inspiration to The Crazed Moon (1997), commissioned by BBC Wales. -- www.ondine.net