GUTO PRYDERI PUW (b.1971): ...unless I open the door..., Oboe Concerto, Reservoirs, Hologram, "Break the Stone" Overture.

Description: "...unless . . ." is a dramatic tone poem, illustrating an episode from the mediaeval Welsh collection of legends, the Mabinogion. As with all the pieces here, the work illuminates its extramusical subject-matter with remarkable vividness of imagery, drawing on a postmodern palette of widely varied techniques, from folk music quotations to dense clusters, and some highly original and colorful orchestration, embellishing a vocabulary based on a highly chromatic, extended tonality. The attractive and eloquent concerto consists of five movements exploring characteristics of speech; this work suggests tonal centers even more strongly, with lyrical solo writing and diverting humor. Reservoirs has a poetic inspiration, dealing with the controversial and destructive drowning of Welsh valleys to make way for the picturesque man-made lakes of the title. The work accordingly has disturbing, dissonant undercurrents and the mechanistic drive of ruthless industrialization alternating with depictions of the tranquil landscape. Hologram's slowly evolving, scintillant colors and textures emulate the viewing of a three-dimensional image, while the vigorous occasional overture celebrates the 125th anniversary of the foundation of Bangor University by evoking the local community industry of slate quarrying, with its rhythmic laboring motif and the transformation of rough natural materials into refined artifacts.