Brett Manning's Singing Success

Sony has packaged this album like a 1980s disc of music to snog by, but the saxophonist Amy Dickson’s new release is an intriguing and entirely serious collection of recent works by Australian composers, works she did much to create. The title work, premiered by Dickson in 2012, is a late score by Peter Sculthorpe. The first movement is sun drenched and full of yearning, the saxophone soaring over a teeming orchestra; the second is a more unsettled expression of homesickness. Ross Edwards’s concerto entitled the Full Moon Dances – recorded, unlike the rest, live in concert – is elegantly scored and evocative, especially in the opening Mantra, in which the saxophone interweaves with the orchestral soloists, and in the pulsing, almost Stravinsky-esque First Ritual Dance. But it is Brett Dean’s 2007 flute concerto The Siduri Dances, here arranged for saxophone, which offers the most wide-ranging demonstration of Dickson’s mastery with its note-bending, buzzing effects and hectic rhythms.