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Composed in 1988, Nicholas Maw's
Ghost Dances employs the same instrumental ensemble as Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire and shares something of its macabre atmosphere. There is also an added element - folk instruments (from the African thumb piano to the American strumstick) played by the existing players for largely colouristic and atmospheric purposes. The 'ghosts' of the title are largely those of memory-related and dream-distorted images of many different forms of the dance, images that range from its most sophisticated to its commonest manifestations, and from the naïve through the nostalgic to the horrific. An atmospheric, highly allusive, and tautly organized suite of dances coloured by such sensitive scoring that throughout its 27-minute span it sounds consistently and engagingly like nothing else.
'... shows an ability to rework the romantic tradition in ways that are fresh and inventive ... attractive, highly diverse music, which sometimes touches on the nightmarish intensity of Pierrot Lunaire, but more often takes a sly, sideways glance at many other 20th - century styles, the very tangle of influences through which Maw has steered his own, dogged course.'
The Guardian (Andrew Clements), 25 July 1997
