“. . . It was much easier to like Martin Suckling’s storm, rose, tiger, a 20-minute abstract musical poem first performed by the SCO last year. Suckling, a Glaswegian born in 1981, has clear musical ideas and knows how to develop them, always leading the ear with a skein of beguiling sonorities. Therein lies the success of storm, rose, tiger, a far more attractive piece than his complex programme note suggested.
The opening section, lush and luminous, pits string and brass cantilenas against disruptive woodwind commentaries, generating a sense of creative struggle. Then comes a sequence of intensely expressive polyphonies, almost pibroch-like in their reverberant, lilting effects. After some moody, meditative trumpet calls, the piece ends with a passacaglia of majestic pulse and grandeur.”