Gordon Getty is mainly known for his vocal works but that he writes very well for orchestra proves the CD Orchestral Works. Neville Marriner leads the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in contemporary music that touches the listener surprisingly well. It begins with the overture to his opera Plump Jack. American Getty, in his sixties, does not feel embarrassed to say that for two/thirds he stands in the nineteenth century. That other part is responsible for the fact that his music sounds everything but old-fashioned. Stravinsky, Copland and Prokofiev have inspired him here and there without affecting his originality. For example the Ancestor Suite smells very American although it is a series of old European dances: waltz, Scottish dance, polka, gavotte and sarabande. It is very colourful composed ballet-music, inspired by the story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. A beauty is Tiefer und Tiefer for strings. What a splendid intense sounding simplicity. The Homework Suite opens seductively with an oboe part, followed in the other small movements with beautiful, dancing-like roles for the other soloists. With The Fiddler of Ballykeel he refers catchingly to a neighbourhood near Belfast where his ancestors came from. Raising the Colors is a beautiful fanfare-like encore for brass, virtuoso finished with wood and strings. Not only in super audio this music is a surprise.