Frank Denyer

Abstract

tones fall out one by one like loose teeth’, as Brodsky brilliantly puts it). Mac̆elaru and the WDR Sinfonieorchester handle this balance well, presenting every gesture sincerely while allowing each the possibility of collapse, eruption or transformation, never letting them lapse into irony. And still, despite an abundance of ‘moments’ (like those chords, like the solos for horn or piano, like the pulsing wooden percussion, like the Copland-esque trumpets of the third movement), Lim’s music remains fundamentally concerned with lines. The only difference with an orchestra is that they are more thickly drawn and are stretched over greater distances. Again, Mac̆elaru and his orchestra excel at maintaining the necessary momentum through a rapidly shape-shifting terrain. When, in the final movement, Emily Hindrichs’ soprano arrives (one can’t help but think of Beethoven) she feels like a sublime but utterly natural addition, blooming, almost imperceptibly at first, out of those trumpet calls. She sings words by Etel Adnan, from ‘The Spring Flowers Own’, the image of a loved one moving ‘like a bunch of flowers’, a ‘light-wave’, ‘the beginning of the day’. Driven by desire, the line keeps moving.