MGV (Musique à Grand Vitesse) was written to commission for the opening of the TVG high-speed train line at Lille, which runs to Paris, but it doesn't play out like a typical "commission." MGV is grand, relentlessly rhythmic, and exciting music that rushes onward for a full half hour with only a couple of relatively quiet passages to allow for the listener to stretch his/her legs; "High Speed Music," as per its subtitle, indeed.
Michael Nyman employs an interesting format in this piece, which is a sort of a concerto grosso with the small
Michael Nyman Band serving as a ripieno and triggering off the material used in the orchestra, technically the "soloist." MGV is terrific driving music and easily appealing; the slight difference in intonation between the
Nyman Band and the full orchestra leads to some interesting "bends" in the harmonic texture as MGV rounds a curve here and there.
Nyman's score for the
Jane Campion film The Piano (1993) was so enormously popular that
Nyman would have been undercapitalizing himself by not composing The Piano Concerto, essentially an extended concert paraphrase on his most famous film score. The genre of the piano concerto based on a film score is a necessarily English invention anyway, dating back to Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto.
Kathryn Stott performs the solo part in this work, written for the most part in an easy, folk-like idiom in keeping with the source score
Nyman contributed to the film, though the movement entitled "The Hut" is written in a glittering, virtuoso manner not possible for use in the film, as he was limited to composing just music that actress Holly Hunter could reasonably play on the set. This concerto might not appeal to hardcore
Nyman fans that associate him most strongly with avant-garde minimalism, but it makes for a wisely planned and appealing
Nyman disc to offer to the general public as a whole, and those same hardcore fans will find much to admire in MGV.