GUIDO MORINI (b.1959): Una iliade.

Description: Marco Beasley's libretto explores themes derived from the Iliad, rather than retelling the story of the Trojan War in extenso, using the voices of the heroes and gods to reflect on themes of heroism, violence, love and the impacts of war on the individual. Morini is an early music specialist, and his score reflects these preoccupations in sections which evoke Handel, Monteverdi and earlier, more primitive, folk-derived antecedents. Other movements, gentle ballads with piano accompaniment, combine contemporary popular idioms with a hint of Baroque keyboard texture, effortlessly morphing into Baroque aria with the reintroduction of the winds; an intriguing and entirely convincing compound idiom. The language remains tonal throughout, inflected by the various harmonic emphases imposed upon the musics of the different centuries evoked in this imaginative score. Marco Beasley (voice), Guido Morini (piano), The Hilliard Ensemble, Netherlands Wind Ensemble.