Griller / Musica Viva Symphony Orchestra Orchestral Music 2 CD

The composer Arnold Griller (b. 1937), son of the violinist Sidney Griller, grew up in London, surrounded by some of the world's best-known musicians. In spite of this propitious beginning to his career, his considerable output remains largely unknown. This second volume of orchestral pieces presents four major works, one of them Griller's only symphony. His music is highly individual: it absorbs a number of disparate influences, not least Milhaud (his main teacher) and late Stravinsky, shows an occasional touch of the surreal and the bizarre, and infuses the result with radiant lyricism, edgy humor and restless energy. The career of Alexander Walker has taken him all over the world. His pioneering recordings for Naxos have been of music by Havergal Brian and Ignaz Waghalter. He works regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and has toured with the Royal Ballet to the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theaters in Russia and throughout the USA. Emin Martirosian, born in Yerevan in 1987, graduated from the Moscow State Conservatoire in 2011 as both cellist and pianist. Since 2001 he has toured actively, both in Russia and abroad: the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Moldova, Switzerland, Turkey, and elsewhere.