Well Worth Exploration Orchestral music by Lodewijk Mortelmans - heard by ROBERT ANDERSON 'The performances ... are a delight ...'

This Flemish composer finds increasing breathing-space as successive Groves expand; but we're told the songs are the best of him. The first and last of these orchestral works are among the curtain-lowerers of the nineteenth century, with Wagner not long dead, and Brahms battling cancer during Spring. Strauss may have been hurtling across the musical stage, but Mortelmans took no notice; nor did he worry that Mahler clearly felt the play was already over and entertained himself with a few protracted and more or less grotesque curtain-calls; still less did he bother that Schoenberg busied himself imposing a musical tyranny in the name of musical democracy...

BELGIUM

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC