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Plausible Interest

Chamber music by
Kerry Turner -
reviewed by
PATRIC STANDFORD

'... accessible, neatly made, technically challenging ...'

Chamber Music of Kerry Turner. Rotterdam Philharmonic Chamber Players. © 2006 MSR Classics

Kerry Turner is a Texan by birth, a native of San Antonio, but for the last twenty years has been resident in Luxembourg where he is a member of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, a notable French horn soloist and a member of the American Horn Quartet.

As a composer he certainly knows what he is doing, and does it extremely well. His work is accessible, neatly made, technically challenging -- yet like all the best competent writing it doesn't make any severe demands on the listener, even though the players might find it a tough test. Horn playing is a tough test, and the horn quartet, so rarely appealing to composers because they don't know how to make a success of it, is one of the toughest to make sound warm and untroubled. Turner creates the sort of music that leaves the listener comfortably unaware of technical problems, either in its making or playing.

His Quartet No 3 for horns is fifteen years old this year, and has a syncopated buoyancy (covering four octaves!) and a witty good humour that could be, for British listeners, reminiscent of two of our great knights, Walton and Malcolm Arnold at their best [listen -- track 8, 1:05-1:49].

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Copyright © 4 November 2007 Patric Standford, Wakefield UK

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