Award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel scales heights and plumbs depths with his novel new recording of concertos, for piccolo and for four Wagner tubas.

Following his recently released Requiem, last year’s epic seven-hour Gospel According to Mark, and concertante works for all ranges for his own instrument – oboe, oboe d’amore and bass oboe – Chris’ new recording includes a dazzling Concerto for Piccolo featuring principal piccolo player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Sarah Jackson, paired with an astounding assemblage of four players of the Wagner tuba, a hybrid tuba-French horn instrument commissioned by the namesake composer for his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Both Jackson and the four Wagner tuba soloists – Oliver de Clercq, Laurel Spencer, Valerie Whitney, Holly Bryan – are superbly supported by conductor Clyde Mitchell and the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra.

CHRISTOPHER TYLER NICKEL (b. 1978)
Concerto for Piccolo
1. I. Andante con ferocia (6.17)
2. II. Andante (8.28)
3. III. Allegro con fuoco (7.47)

Concerto for Four Wagner Tubas
4. I. Lacrimoso (9.28)
5. II. Adagio (6.52)
6. III. Allegro (6.38)

This lushly orchestrated new recording opens on Nickel’s Concerto for Piccolo, which begins with the confidence of flight shown within Andante con ferocia, before bringing us the slightly foreboding, yet cultured Andante, closing on the sterner, yet flighty Allegro con fuoco.

The second piece here is Nickel’s Concerto for Four Wagner Tubas, which itself opens on the languishing Lacrimoso, then brings us the resplendent Adagio, the recording closing on the stridently uplifting Allegro.

Christopher Tyler Nickel | composer Mary Lynch VanderKolk | oboe Paige Roberts Molloy | piano Eduardo Rios | violin Andy Liang | violin Olivia Chew | viola Efe Baltacıgil | cello.

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