Macbeth

Neeme Järvi’s multi-volume traversal of Richard Strauss with the Scottish National Orchestra was largely successful, and this effort of the early Macbeth symphonic poem and the rare vocal/orchestral song Notturno was a highlight. The Rosenkavalier Waltz sequences are a bit of lightweight filler in contrast to the darker themes of the other works on offer, but as a program is quite interesting.

Their score for Roman Polanski's Macbeth film required the group to work in a somewhat more constricted format. So instead of lengthy hypnotic drones, this album's split into 16 separate pieces, some of them quite short. It's consequently not as reflective of their highest ambitions as the Third Ear Band album, and loses a bit when placed out of context from the Shakespeare classic. It still works reasonably effectively on its own, conjuring appopriately ominous Elizabethean moods, with the surprise addition of (uncredited) female vocals on one track.