Scott Kirkpatrick

Twenty years after The Crystal Method’s debut album, Vegas, blazed a trail across the American desert, imagining sparkling breakbeat architectures where the early ’90s rave scene had largely crumbled, Scott Kirkland’s pioneering electronic project continues to thrill. On opener “The Raze,” the breakbeats sound bigger than ever, the guitars are practically heavy metal, and the synths have a widescreen grandeur. Electronic textures aglow, atmospheric instrumentals like “Turbulence” and “Let’s Go Home” reflect Kirkland’s parallel career scoring Hollywood films, while vocal standouts like “Ghost in the City” condense his unusual range of influences—breaks, trip-hop, and even hard-charging alt-rock—into potent hybrids.

Leading young Canadian composer Brian Current, recipient of numerous distinguished international prizes, has collaborated with award-winning writer Anton Piatigorsky in an exciting work for voice and accompanying ensemble. Airline Icarus is set aboard an airliner in which, taking the myth of Icarus as the central image, the composer “explores themes of hubris mixed with technology”. The result is a powerful, resonant work which won Current the Italian Premio Fedora Award in 2011.

The astonishing technical variety and wide emotional range contained in Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas make each and every encounter a rewarding adventure in which the listener is seldom left untouched. This is Pierre Hantaï’s third solo disc of Scarlatti’s sonatas though only the second in his current series for the Mirare label. It contains several pieces less frequently performed than others and with which many readers may find themselves unfamiliar. The first item, in fact, is one of only seven sonatas of Scarlatti’s that is a straightforward fugue. It is an uncharacteristically didactic piece, even a shade austere compared to the rest of Hantaï’s recital which contains a kaleidoscope of colourful images. What Hantaï seems to be emphasising in his choice is that elusive, somewhat abstracted improvisatory quality present in so many of the pieces and of which the Sonata in E major K 215 provides a well-sustained example. Generally speaking, Hantaï follows Ralph Kirkpatrick’s suggestion that Scarlatti probably intended to group his sonatas into pairs or occasionally threes according to key.