On The Music of Peter Boyer
London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Boyer, conductor; Koch International Classics, 2001
“Peter Boyer makes a most impressive debut on disc as composer and conductor of his own music. ...At its finest, his music is attractive, finely crafted with a genuine humanity, refreshing for being nondidactic in these times of preachy self-importance. ...Boyer shows himself an assured podium figure, eliciting playing of tremendous drive and sympathy from a very engaged London Symphony Orchestra. This marks a most auspicious debut for a young composer we will definitely hear more from in the future.”
—Lawrence Johnson, South Florida Sun–Sentinel, August 2002
“Boyer is, without question, a serious talent and a composer to watch.”
—David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com, August 2001
“Crowd-pleasing, tuneful music, confidently realised and sumptuously engineered... A burgeoning cinematic and theatrical flair informs the earliest piece here, the 1995 tone-poem Titanic... Ecstatically received by American audiences, it exhibits a formidable technical assurance... readily approachable and expertly scored... his versatility and skill are not in doubt... the LSO (and their superb brass in particular) have a field day under the composer’s lead... Spectacularly vivid sound, too.”
—Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone Awards Issue, October 2001
“The ability to tell a story or paint a scene in music has been scorned for a while in academic circles, but it has never lost its fans among ordinary music-lovers and in Boyer it has found a skilled, vigorous new champion.”
—Joe McLellan, classical music critic emeritus of The Washington Post, for RedLudwig.com, July 2001
“...The sparkling and sure-handed music of Peter Boyer...expressed in characteristically exuberant, ingenious orchestration.”
—Steve Metcalf, The Hartford Courant, June 2001
“Peter is one of these wonderful people, like Elliot Goldenthal, who have the craft and imagination to enter the concert world and the film world, embrace both of them and show that it can be done.”
—John Corigliano, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, June 2001
“...he can set a scene or create a mood rapidly and unambiguously; he writes with great flair for big orchestras. His manifest destiny is to compose music for Hollywood blockbusters. But, while waiting for the call from the major studios, he has composed several pieces for various American orchestras of unarguable effectiveness...” **** (for performance)
—Anthony Burton, BBC Music Magazine, December 2001
“Peter Boyer’s style...is American to the marrow: rock-solid in technique, brimming with energy... The best works—the coruscating Celebration Overture, and the strongly inventive Three Olympians—are excellent. ...the LSO is impressive throughout.”
—Malcolm Hayes, Classic FM Magazine, December 2001
“From that latter category [film composers] Boyer has embraced the value of making his music easily accessible, of speaking in large rhetorical and melodic gestures, of setting mood directly and unequivocally, of clothing his ideas in resourceful and colorful orchestration. From that former category [concert hall composers] he has learned to deploy the unexpected harmonic move, the clever juxtaposition of disparate melodic or rhythmic elements, the value of sound symphonic development... [On Three Olympians:] His string writing is resourceful, and, like everything else on this release, effective... If you are a fan of film music, then by all means acquire this one. It is beautifully conducted and performed by a most informed young composer.”
—William Zagorski, Fanfare, Nov./Dec. 2001
“...at least three of the pieces here strike me as potentially having a long life in the concert hall. Not bad for a composer barely out of his twenties. ...His tone poem Titanic...is far and away the most adventuresome music here harmonically, and, for a composer at that stage of his career, it is a remarkable work. ...The performances under the composer’s direction are wonderfully sonorous, and he gets splendid playing from the London Symphony, once again at the forefront of London’s virtuoso orchestras. Certainly a voice worth keeping an eye on...”
—John Story, Fanfare, Nov./Dec. 2001
“Peter Boyer seems to have swallowed much of 20th-century American music whole and spit it back out with a gift for melody, a sense of wonder, fine craftsmanship and a solid foundation in works that came before.”
—Daniel Buckley, Tucson Citizen, July 2001
“Peter Boyer sums up laid-back American eclecticism... He conducts the London Symphony Orchestra (in brilliant, ebullient form) in his unashamedly accessible music, from a bouncy Celebration Overture to evocations of Greek myth.”
—Martin Hoyle, The Mail on Sunday (UK national newspaper), November 2001