Laurie Christman: Running With Horses
Navona Records

While composer Laurie Christman benefits tremendously from the involvement of the world-renowned London Symphony Orchestra and award-winning conductor Robert Ziegler on this album-length presentation of her music, even a lesser orchestra would have to work very hard to lessen her material's impact. Sumptuous, lyrical, and rhapsodic, the six settings on Running With Horses present as compelling an argument for her music as could possibly be made, and that they're delivered exquisitely makes the release all the more rewarding. Nature plays a significant part in the album's pieces, which are often marked by alluring pastoral splendour; yet while titles such as Rolling Fields and Meadow Suite do much to conjure visualizations of the outdoors, Christman's expressive music would do much the same even if generic titles were used.

A few words about the composer are in order before turning to the pieces proper. The Los Angeles-born Christman grew up in musical home with an opera singer mother and was exposed to and influenced by the music of the Romantic and Impressionist eras. Her debut album Where Dreams Become Sunlight appeared in 2001, and in the years following many of the pieces featured on Running With Horses have been presented, including Meadow Suite in 2009 and Wedding Suite in 2017. They and four others were recorded for the new release during February 2024 at LSO St. Luke's in London, England. Needless to say, Christman's in the best possible hands when the London Symphony Orchestra, named by Gramophone as one of the top five orchestras in the world, partners with Ziegler, who's issued numerous recordings on Sony Classics and Deutsche Grammophon.

The six works differ with respect to subject matter, yet all exemplify Christman's humanistic and compassionate sensibility. Her music is inspired by love and beauty, but it also doesn't shy away from acknowledging the realities of sorrow and loss. In notes accompanying the release, she references the devastating experience of losing both her parents close together and of working as a hospice nurse and thus witnessing life's transitions first-hand. As the soul-replenishing character of these works shows, all such experiences have bolstered her appreciation for the enrichments life, people, and nature have bestowed.

Perhaps no piece better embodies those qualities than the transporting Rolling Fields, an expression of harmonious sweep that swells from its tranquil and tender intro into something more grandiose, though not before intoxicating the ear with lilting harp, flute, oboe, and string gestures. The LSO is in especially fine form in rendering the textures of her music, and Ziegler guides the orchestra with an assured hand and firm command of tempo. The poignant opening of Running With Horses perpetuates the beauty of Rolling Fields with a stirring rhapsody that honours a beloved spirit that has passed on and is now free (that the spirit represents Christman's mother tells you everything you need to know about the composer's reverence for her elder). In keeping with the work's title, the pace of the music spiritedly picks up before returning to moving articulations of loss. That dimension aside, the music generally exudes affirmation and triumph.

Three suites follow in turn, the three-part Sylvan Suite first. Its expansive opening movement blossoms like a gorgeous spring morn excited to embrace the day, after which the central part—“a love poem to the greenwood,” according to the composer—plunges fully into a state of pastoral reverie and the high-energy third celebrates the forest in all its verdant glory. In its title, Meadow Suite suggests another exercise in nature contemplation, but it's more focused on dance forms. “Gigue I” and “Gigue II” romp joyfully, the “Sarabande” is a touching pas de deux sweetened by romantic woodwind and string melodies, and the short “Finale” resolves the work with a bright celebratory flourish. Composed for a bride who requested new wedding music, Wedding Suite begins with a dignified “April Joy (Processional)” whose harmonious tone augurs well for the soon-to-be-wed couple. The moving music Christman wrote for “De l'amour à l'amour (Bridal Walk)” effectively evokes the flush of joy the groom feels as he sees his life-partner-to-be approaching. “Love on the Wind (Recessional)” concludes the work regally as the now-married couple slowly exits the venue along with the wedding party and guests. At album's end, the focus returns to nature with Winds Blowing, for which the composer visualized “a schooner in full sail in the night, in total harmony with wind and water.” Emblematic of the album's tone, the contemplative reverie opens with lilting flute and harp figures before strings and oboe emerge to majestically expand the music's scope.

November 2025