Long Journey Back

The Sunday Times, Paul Driver
"Clapperton (b. 1968) is a left-leaning Scottish pianist-composer much preoccupied with Scottish themes, though cosmopolitan in his technical outlook - an heir to Ronald Stevenson, perhaps. The title of this survey of his work, and of the first item, indicates a return from the avant-gardism that exercised him as a young composer and virtuoso exponent of Ferneyhough and Xenakis to a softer idiom made of decorative, trill-like figures, and suggests a rapturous contemplation of a lost folk paradise. The approach serves equally for pieces such as The Testament of Cresseid or The Resoning betuir Aige and Yowth and miniatures dedicated to friends."' **