When reviewing the first recording of Arne Nordheim’s then very new Suite from his ballet The Tempest (1979), recorded for Philips by the South West German Radio Orchestra conducted by Charles Darden (8/80; later reissued by the Norwegian label Aurora), Arnold Whittall noted ‘how little truly memorable music has been inspired by … Shakespeare’s most musical play’ but found Nordheim’s suite – representing a little under half the ballet’s total duration – ‘too rhapsodic and static’, as well as ‘too soft-centred to be truly magical’. In his Specialist’s Guide to music for The Tempest (8/14), Andrew Mellor – coincidentally, the annotator for this new recording – gave Nordheim’s ‘utterly engrossing’ score top billing.

I am with AM in finding Nordheim’s score enthralling, indeed, one of his finest compositions. A masterly reduction of the two-hour-long original, the suite is scored for a relatively small orchestra – double woodwind with doublings, single brass, three percussionists, harp, celesta and electric piano – with substantial parts for soprano and baritone (mostly singing wordlessly) and electronic tape. Nordheim’s expanded sonic palette represents the ‘thousand twangling instruments’ of Prospero’s island, the variety of the scoring fantastical and diverse. With its many instrumental solos, especially trombone (in two of the eight movements), cello (in the fifth, ‘Lacrymae’) and viola, the players sadly not credited by LAWO, and some impressive sectional writing – as in the vibrant sixth movement, ‘A Mazed Trod’ – the work sounds as rich as an orchestral concerto at times. And contrary to AW, the final section of the suite is compelling, magical and gorgeously written.

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have a long tradition of Nordheim performances and, with a well-prepared Edward Gardner at the helm, provide an even more gripping account than did the South West German Radio Orchestra 42 years earlier. Beate Mordal and Jeremy Carpenter are more beautifully balanced within the ensemble, captured by LAWO’s superb sound, more natural than Philips’ which, while still sounding well, is now showing its age and seems a little fierce by comparison. A marvellous recording: I urge everyone to buy this and be enraptured.