Country Dances (Book 1) (2001)

Partita is for much of its three-movement course indistinguishable from Bennett’s basic film-score idiom, though there are passages – the opening movement’s second section, for instance –in which reassuringly familiar melodic material is accompanied by and unusually high level of chromatic and textural density. Two Country dances proved to be natural successors to Peter Walock’s Capriol Suite, while Concerto for Stan Getz integrates its jazz elements with a deft touch into more classical writing for the strings and the timpani that accompany the solo tenor saxophone.
Andy Scott was the soloist here, demonstrating apparently effortless control of all the dimensions of his part.