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Breaking Waves on SACD

Three works by three women composers from three

different countries, each piece with it's own original

idiom, are performed here by the Ostrobothnian

Chamber Orchestra under the direction of it's dynamic

conductor and artistic director Malin Broman. Three

works that assuredly deserve a wider audience!

The Sea Sketches by Welsh composer Grace Williams

open the programme. Inspired by the beaches of

Glamorganshire and by it's seascape, this five-movement

work seems in constant motion and evolution. One can

practically taste the salt spray and feel the power of the

waves.

The second work is Grazyna Bacewicz's Fourth String

Quartet, played here in an arrangement for string

orchestra. Bacewicz was an important figure on the

Polish music scene in the mid-20th century, and her

quartet is an approachable work - something that has

undoubtedly contributed to making it her best-known

composition - with influences of folk music and passages

which, according to Malin Broman, can only be

described as heavenly.

Vienna-born Johanna Muller-Hermann's String Quartet,

also in an arrangement for string orchestra, concludes

the programme. Exciting, beautiful and powerful, this

work with it's post-romantic language is a testimony to

the golden age of Vienna, when the music of Mahler,

Strauss and her teacher Zemlinsky reigned supreme.