Emily Howard: Torus

Emily Howard is a multi-award-winning composer who is deeply fascinated with the poetry that can be found in mathematical shapes and processes. The development of a series of geometry-inspired orchestral works has been central to her creative practice over recent years, and these Orchestral Geometries make up three of the four pieces on Howard's new album, Torus.

The work which gives the album its name was a 2016 BBC Proms Commission described by The Times as "visionary", and was the winner of the orchestral category of the 2017 British Composer Awards. Here the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins bring to life Howard's meditation on the shape which her collaborator, the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy describes in his notes for the album as "a finite flat geometry where top and bottom are joined into a cylinder which is then connected at both ends to make a doughnut shape."

Howard translates this into vivid music punctuated with continual oscillations and pulsations, with the void in the centre of the shape playing a vital part in this music of stark contrasts. This new album follows Magnetite, the critically-acclaimed portrait disc which NMC released in 2016 as part of the label's Debut Disc series.

"an arresting take on that interplay of 'heart and brain' that has been a mainstay of Western music. The cerebral basis of all these pieces may be undeniable, though equally so is the precision of their forms and, above all, the allure of their expression judged intrinsically as sound." - Arcana

"These recordings sit on the edge of discomfort, relishing in the stark contrasts of timbres available to an orchestra. Oscillating between these extremes, this is music-making at its most dynamic." - BBC Music Magazine

"On this album, all three orchestras, all three conductors and all three recordings fit well with the overriding need for lucidity as well as resolution - there's a sense of confidence that the means are always precisely suited to the expressive ends." - Gramophone

"however grandly cosmic the thinking from which these compositions start out, the end results are intensely human as well as deeply satisfying." - Gramophone