Christopher Tyler Nickel: Concerto for Piccolo • Concerto for Four Wagner Tubas

Summary:

“Christopher Tyler Nickel is known for writing concertos for unusual instruments, and this album embraces two of these … in the tuba concerto … Nickel seems to draw much more on the landscapes of his native Canada… sonorities of the tubas are warm, but also suggest the alpine horn, producing a tone of integrity, well matched with the accompanying string orchestra.” – Anne Templer, BBC Music magazine

“Two pretty left-field choices on this concerto double-bill from Christopher Tyler Nickel. The piccolo works brilliantly against the powerful orchestra, though Nickel often uses spikily spare textures so that soloist Sarah Jackson doesn’t need to deploy her instrument’s most piercing tones. The slow movement in particular is utterly gorgeous – a very ‘rich and strange’ soundworld. The concerto for four Wagner tubas sits in a more lyrical place, with a distinct hint of Respighi in the slow movement and a concluding Allegro in a celebratory, foot-stomping D major” – Presto Music

“Award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel scales heights and plumbs depths with his novel new recording of concertos, for piccolo and for four Wagner tubas” – Exclusive magazine

Following his recently released Requiem, last year’s epic seven-hour Gospel According to Mark, and concertante works for all ranges for his own instrument – oboe, oboe d’amore and bass oboe – Chris’ new recording includes a dazzling Concerto for Piccolo featuring principal piccolo player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Sarah Jackson, paired with an astounding assemblage of four players of the Wagner tuba, a hybrid tuba-French horn instrument commissioned by the namesake composer for his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Both Jackson and the four Wagner tuba soloists – Oliver de Clercq, Laurel Spencer, Valerie Whitney, Holly Bryan – are superbly supported by conductor Clyde Mitchell and the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra.