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Douglas Gordon Weiland: Chamber Music, Vol. 1 on CD

The music of Douglas Gordon Weiland - born, like Elgar, in Worcestershire, in 1954 - is one of the better-kept secrets of British musical life: very little of his substantial catalogue of orchestral, chamber and choral works has been recorded. This first volume in a projected series reveals a composer with an individual musical language, an angular lyricism informed by echoes of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Frank Martin, it's quieter moments having something of the autumn elegance of late Brahms and it's more propulsive passages the energy and rough humour of Nielsen and Robert Simpson. Weiland was himself a professional violinist for some years, moreover, and he writes for the instrument with deep understanding.