The Seasons (1988) 22 min 

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A visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired this four-movement work in which each of the four seasons is inspired by a different work of visual art.

Musgrave is a musical dramatist par excellence. The Seasons seethes with dramatic incident, which you can either take at an abstract or a pictorial level… Two real Musgrave fingerprints stamp the piece: the long-limbed gorgeous romanticism of spring, which becomes as ardent as Strauss; and the unstoppable, hectic, racing momentum of her celebration of summer – at subtly depicting high-velocity action, she is almost without parallel. — Michael Tumelty, Glasgow Herald

 

 

Trumpet Concerto (2019) 20 min

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Written in five near-continuous, short movements, Musgrave's Trumpet Concerto for Alison Balsom takes its point of inspiration from other artworks: here, the nature painting of the Scottish artist Victoria Crowe.

The dark opening string phrases of Thea Musgrave's new trumpet concerto fall on the silence with the certainty of something that is as it is because it could be no other way. Throughout this short, dramatic, often skittish work you felt that same sense of an artist in complete control of her material, and saying what she has to say precisely as she means to say it. — Richard Bratby, The Arts Desk

 

 

Turbulent Landscapes (2003) 26 min

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Turbulent Landscapes, like the Trumpet Concerto, is inspired by visual art: here, several iconic paintings by J.M.W. Turner.

…one of the finest, freshest contemporary works I’ve heard in a long time...Musgrave’s skill is to find a musical method of evoking the central aspect of Turner’s paintings, and her lifetime of compositional skill shows in her shrewd choices of instrumentation and structure... It’s incredibly refreshing to find a contemporary piece of music that’s genuinely pictorial. — Simon Thompson, Bachtrack

 

 

Phoenix Rising (1997) 23 min

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Phoenix Rising is a prime example of Musgrave’s expert use of drama and narrative in the orchestral milieu, underlined by the physical spacing of the players: on-stage and off-stage soloists and four percussion players widely spread around the back of the orchestra.

20 years after its première, Phoenix Rising continues to impress by dint of a very simple characteristic: the music always seems to know exactly where it is going. It never outstays its welcome and the composer skilfully contrasts the moments of dramatic intervention (here given over to horns, timpani and side-drums) with pastoral interludes in which a dazzling array of instrumental colour is exploited. — Alexander Hall, Bachtrack

 

 

Loch Ness – A Postcard from Scotland (2012) 8 min

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A light-hearted work in which a tuba represents the iconic monster.

...lightweight in intention but beautifully imagined orchestrally... — George Hall, The Guardian

 

 

Concerto for Orchestra (1967) 23 min

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Musgrave's concerto is an exercise in instrumental democracy. When she was writing a chamber concerto, preoccupations with the conflicting claims of solo and ensemble pursued her into sleep, and it was from a dream of a clarinet standing up, inciting his fellow musicians to revolt, that Musgrave fashioned the climactic sequence of this larger score. Its dramatic impact is all the greater for emerging from a reasoned dialogue, articulated most clearly by the wind instruments, mainly expressive but also bursting into paroxysms of fast notes that contribute to the mounting tension. — Rian Evans, The Guardian

 

 

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