Colin Currie Photo: Linda Nylind
James MacMillan's first percussion concerto Veni Veni Emmanuel is arguably his best-known work. Since its première in 1992, it has been performed many hundreds of times around the world and has been a revolutionary force in the percussion concerto form.
Twenty years later, MacMillan returns to the form in a new percussion concerto for his fellow Scot, the virtuoso Colin Currie, to whom the work is dedicated.
Colin Currie has said: "The great thing about Percussion Concerto No 2 is that you can tell percussion has been through a number of revolutions since the early 90s and his his first concerto, so the use of the instruments is somehow more advanced. There are more technical challenges. There are more combinations of instruments. It's a very up-to-the-minute use of percussion instruments. It's a fascinating way of showing what can be done."
Recorded 8 July 2017, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert.
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Graham Kennedy
