“A sense of patient, spectral unease is alive in Suckling’s second track, “Release,” which sounds as if it’s incorporated some lessons from the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg.
The liner notes for “This Departing Landscape” include an encomium from one the British scene’s elders, Julian Anderson. Anderson observes that Suckling has studied with the American composer Martin Bresnick, as well as with George Benjamin, who is British, but that his output resembles the work of none of his teachers.
When praising Suckling’s “bewilderingly diverse” Piano Concerto, Anderson asks, “How can the hyperactive polyrhythms of the opening part belong in the same climate as the vast landscape of the central slow movement, or as the complex deployment of extended instrumental techniques in movement four?”
His short answer to his own question is that this music is “rich, generous, exuberant and positive,” and that the “power of the contrasts” seems persuasive, even on a first listen.
Suckling’s worldliness helps make those contrasts possible. In a recent interview for the website Presto Classical, he highlighted his interest in Morton Feldman (1926-87), whose meditative sensibility also informs contemporary American composers like Tyshawn Sorey. Discussing Feldman’s extraordinarily long later works, Suckling has said that “there’s a hugely touching intimacy in spite of the scale.” He’s after something similar in his Piano Concerto, underneath all that whirling variation.”