The ECM label is making quite a fuss over the London-trained Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova – "richly melodic, texturally sensuous, often emotionally radiant" is the pitch. Tabakova favours melodic writing with folk-derived inflections, solid, wall-of-sound backgrounds, and immediacy of effect, whether it's in creating skeins of minimalistically patterned dissonance or rewriting the styles of centuries ago. To my ears, the immediacy has all the subtlety of the plot and titling of that notorious action thriller, Snakes on a Plane. And, like Snakes on a Plane, String Paths has top- name support – the performers include violinist Janine Jansen, viola-player Maxim Rysanov and cellist Torleif Thedéen.
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