BRENTON BROADSTOCK (b.1952): Festive Overture, Timeless, The Mountain, Federation Square: Rooms of Wonder, Symphony No. 4 “Born from Good Angel’s Tears”.

Description: These bold and eloquent orchestral works should appeal to those who respond to neo-romanticism but have no objection to the seamless integration of more modernistic elements into what is basically a harmony-based, modal-tonal idiom. Sibelius is a very audible influence on Broadstock’s impressively broad landscape canvases; one feels his presence especially in the more recent works, in which Broadstock has more fully embraced a vocabulary based on tonal centers. There is a strong sense of a human element in Broadstock’s music; concerned as he is with social and environmental concerns, it is perhaps inevitable that he would seek to avoid ivory-tower abstraction, and all the works here, from the lively (very tonal) Festive Overture - which sounds just like what it says it is - to the brief, compressed Tapiola-like symphony (not much longer than the other works here, based on a modern fairy tale with a humanistic theme, quoted in extenso in the booklet) are instantly accessible and make their emotional point surely and accurately. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra; Ola Rudner.