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James MacMillan, composer / conductor

Reviews

"The most exciting young British composer to have emerged in the 1990s"
The Guardian

"His recent account of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks concerto given with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at City Hall, Glasgow was superior, it must be said, to the one I heard by Sir Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in Paris the week before. Where the BCMG’s was routine and occasionally insecure, the SCO’s had bracing textures and dead-right tempi that let the neo-Bachian idiom come across in all its witty incisiveness. The intersecting lines were almost palpable: they had the tang of resin and the crispness of reeds. The pair of horns riding dangerously high at the end snatched a victory for counterpoint."
Sunday Times

"MacMillan’s performance of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony was similarly fresh and fascinating. He brought out details and transformations which in most performances don’t rise above the subliminal level – a composer’s eye-view, and well worth having."
The Scotsman

"For a composer barely in his thirties to emerge as a star in an international symphony concert, not just for his music but for his conducting too, is a formidable achievement.… on this showing he is a natural on the rostrum, stirring the Philharmonia players not just to play with precision but to give of their hearts."
The Guardian

"However fascinating, gripping, challenging, contemporary music may be, it isn’t often that it makes direct human contact like this"
Gramophone

"The composer himself directed this electrifying performance, revealing a work that was strongly felt and superbly judged."
Scotland on Sunday

"Tuesday’s Philharmonia concert brought one outright triumph when James MacMillan conducted his The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. Many details emerged more clearly than in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Prom last year and the dramatic sense was stronger."
Independent

"James MacMillan conducted the London Sinfonietta in the most satisfying of the concerts I have so far heard in this season devoted to his music."
Glasgow Herald

"The composer directed this electric performance himself, giving the work an intelligible shape. It is hard to think of another contemporary figure who is so lyrical and dramatic, and yet so thoroughly in command of his material."
The Independent

"And he can make his own music work from the rostrum – surely one of the few conducting composers with real body rhythm."
The Scotsman

"What is more, James MacMillan’s precise and forceful direction ensured that this first performance was accurately and confidently executed."
Glasgow Herald

"Full-blooded and sensitive, the performance – with the composer as conductor – projected the passion and poignancy of the music with intensity."
Glasgow Herald

"In two premieres in as many weeks, MacMillan has directed unusual and complex forces with assurance and charm. His style is direct and answers the problems posed with elegance and humour."
The Scotsman

"Then came the tour de force, with James MacMillan conducting a shattering performance of his highly political response to Latin American repression, Busqueda. It’s not just the range of emotions encompassed in the work, it’s MacMillan’s uncanny manipulation of their flow, and the resultant tension in the listeners, that makes this piece so riveting, so moving."
Glasgow Herald