#124 The Smell of Flirting

This waltz is promising and tentative. There's a classy elegance and abstractness. It's really touching only at the end (at 6'20'') and then it runs away.

Hickox is a great reader of Bridge. No caricatures, yet a bit of extemporaneousness belonging to the beginning of the twentieth century.

Composer: Frank Bridge
Work: Valse intermezzo à cordes
Recording: BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox

#39 The Smell of Dancing Lessons

Electric guitars, saxophones and drums in a suite from an opera. And I smell my first dancing lessons. Crisscross of legs, babel of movements.

However, it's not an ordinary lesson. This one has a touch of David Lynch (listen at 0'12''). Like if you're one of the dancing dwarfs. A one time experience you don't want to go through again.

Composer: Michael Tippett
Work: Suite from New Year, V. Donny's Skarade
Recording: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Richard Hickox