[Thor Joachim Haga]

RVW is maybe my favourite classical composer, mostly due to the pastoral beauty of things like Greensleeves/Thomas Tallis/Lark Ascending etc. So when people went on and on about his ANTARCTIC film score, I eventually decided to check it out a few years ago, in its Gamba performance. Well, there is only a fragment of that pastoral beauty in it, but it’s pretty good for what it is, with all its dramatic highs and lows. Largely tonal and “English” (a lot of RVW’s modern stuff alienates me a little bit), there’s still about 10 minutes of non-stop, Rozsa-ian brooding at the end there, though, which is pretty heavy on the ear.