The first full-length disc from highly-acclaimed young composer David Sawer, featuring scintillating orchestral score the greatest happiness principle, ensemble works Tiroirs and The Memory of Water, and a specially-arranged orchestral suite taken from Sawer’s opera From Morning to Midnight, heard here for the first time.


BBC Symphony Orchestra 

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group 

Martyn Brabbins conductor

Susanna Malkki conductor

'Though the most substantial work in this collection is the 'symphonic' suite that the composer extracted from his opera, From Morning to Midnight, ... the other pieces, all from the late 1990s, show the unfailing originality and distinctiveness of everything David Sawer composes. The chamber orchestral Tiroirs is a sequence of razor-sharp images, each perfectly scored and imagined, and shuffled with a conjuror's virtuosity; The Memory of Water, for string orchestra and a pair of solo violins whose spatial relationship steadily shifts through the course of the piece, is a compelling musical flux that Sawer likens to a flowing river from which ideas emerge only to be submerged again.' The Guardian

‘This is tremendous fun, as well as a testament to Sawer’s imagination’ Fanfare

'Sawer skilfully encapsulates the wide dramatic range of his opera From Morning to Midnight in this half-hour orchestral suite' Gramophone

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