Category Archives: Orchestral

On Record – MahlerFest XXXVI: Kenneth Woods conducts ‘Resurrection’ Symphony & Musgrave’s Phoenix Rising

Posted on by
Reply

April Fredrick (soprano), Stacey Rishoi (mezzo-soprano), Boulder Concert Chorale, Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Musgrave Phoenix Rising (1997)
Mahler Symphony no.2 in C minor ‘Resurrection’ (1888-94)

Colorado MahlerFest 195269301194 [two discs, 104’02”]
Live performances on 21 May 2023, Macky Auditorium, Boulder, Colorado

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Last year’s edition of MahlerFest continued its latest, not-quite-chronological traversal of the symphonies with the Second – appropriately coupled on this release (as in the concert) with a work such as considers ‘resurrection’ from a very different while no less relevant perspective.

What’s the music like?

Six years in the writing, Mahler’s Second Symphony fairly laid the basis for his reputation as a composer at its Berlin premiere in 1895. It is a measure of this performance that it captures something of the shock or excitement no doubt in evidence back then, not least in an opening movement with Kenneth Woods notably more interventionist tempo-wise as compared to that of the Third Symphony a year before. What emerges is imposing but never diffuse, at its most gripping in that baleful lead-in to a development whose terseness duly accentuates its impact, with the pathos of the second subject on its reprise making the coda’s sardonic recessional the more acute. After which, the second movement feels the more enticing through its alternation of warm sentiment with capering animation while heading to a conclusion of beatific repose.

There is no lack of incident in a scherzo whose glancing irony is leavened yet not lessened by its trios, the first as soulful with its lilting trumpets as the second is ominous in its import; but not before Stacey Rishoi has characterized the Urlicht setting with rapt inwardness. What to say about the finale other than, while this may not be the most overwhelming take on its vast fresco, it is matched by relatively few as regards an organic unfolding that sees the movement whole. Its contrasting elements here fuse with unforced cohesion to a fervent rendering of the chorale episode then on to a surging Toten-marsch – the kinetic momentum carried through to a methodical reprise of earlier ideas, then a rendering of Klopstock’s text (much altered by the composer) as only grows in intensity before the majestic affirmation of its closing pages.

As the ‘first half’, Thea Musgrave’s Phoenix Rising provides an ideal complement. The much esteemed (latterly more in the US than the UK) nonagenarian has written often for orchestra, but seldom with such immediacy than in a piece whose formal and expressive trajectory feels nothing if not symphonic in its progress. Comparison with the 2016 studio recording by BBC National Orchestra of Wales and William Boughton (Lyrita SRCD372) confirms that, passing tentativeness in ensemble excepted, Woods’s reading demonstrably makes more of this aspect.

Does it all work?

Yes, pretty much always. As on previous releases in this ongoing Mahler cycle, the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra punches appreciably above its weight in music which should never fall prey to wanton virtuosity. The unyielding acoustic of Macky Auditorium is less an issue than before, with the finale’s offstage brass adeptly managed. April Fredrick brings her customary eloquence to bear on this movement, and the Boulder Concert Chorale – as prepared by Vicki Burrichter – rises to the occasion with notable fervency as this work reaches an ecstatic close.

Is it recommended?

It is. There have been too many superfluous Mahler cycles, but this traversal is shaping up as one of the most worthwhile and more than the memento of a memorable occasion. Hopefully such standards will be maintained by the Sixth Symphony as part of next year’s 37th edition.

Buy

For further purchase options, visit the MahlerFest website – and for more information on the festival itself, click here. Click on the names for further information on conductor Kenneth Woods, soloists April Fredrick, Stacey Rishoi and composer Thea Musgrave

Published post no.2,244 – Friday 19 July 2024

Another serenade for an early summer evening…

Posted on by
Reply

…from the pen of Antonin Dvořák, who wrote two irresistibly charming works in the form – one for strings, and this Serenade for Wind Instruments in D minor, published as Op.44. It has quite a serious tone to begin with – but the wonderful sonorities come through, as in this performance from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, filmed in Cadogan Hall in 2021:

Published post no.2,225 – Sunday 30 June 2024

On Record – George Lloyd: Concertos (Lyrita)

Posted on by
1

George Lloyd
Piano Concerto no.1 ‘Scapegoat’ (1962-3)
Piano Concerto no.2 (1963-4, orch. 1968)
Piano Concerto no.3 (1967-8)
Martin Roscoe (piano), BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / George Lloyd
Piano Concerto no.4 (1970, orch. 1983)
Kathryn Stott (piano), London Symphony Orchestra / George Lloyd

Lyrita SRCD.2421 [two discs, 73’49” and 70’17”]
Producers Ben Turner (1&2), Chris Webster (3), Howard Devon (4)
Engineers Harold Barnes (1&2), Tony Faulkner

Recorded 9 & 10 February 1984 at Henry Wood Hall, London (Piano Concerto no.4), 25 & 26 September 1988 (Piano Concerto no.3) and 20 & 21 October 1990 at Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester (Piano Concertos 1 & 2)

George Lloyd
Violin Concertos no.1 (1970)
Violin Concerto no.2 (1977)
Cristina Anghelescu (violin), Philharmonia Orchestra / David Parry
Cello Concerto (1997)
Anthony Ross (cello), Albany Symphony Orchestra / David Alan Miller

Lyrita SRCD.2422 [two discs, 64’37” and 29’40”]
Producers Ben Turner (Violin Concertos), Gregory Squires (Cello Concerto)
Engineers Phil Hobbs (Violin Concertos), Gregory Squires (Cello Concerto)
29 June to 3 July 1998 at Henry Wood Hall, London (Violin Concertos), 22 April 2001 at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, NY (Cello Concerto)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Lyrita continues its ‘Signature Edition’ of George Lloyd recordings (originally for the Albany label) with two volumes respectively devoted to his concertos for piano and string instruments – all of them being played by soloists either conducted by or who worked with this composer.

What’s the music like?

His previous output having been dominated by the genres of opera, or symphony, Lloyd came belatedly to the concerto. An able violinist in his youth (and taught for several years by Albert Sammons), he had resisted his wife’s predilection for the piano until the early 1960s when he wrote four such works in barely eight years, followed at lengthier intervals by two for violin then one for cello. No less characteristic of their composer, these constitute a significant part of his development from a time when his music was still largely unknown to the wider public.

Hearing the young John Ogdon galvanized Lloyd into writing for the piano, with Scapegoat his striking first attempt at a concerto and his most performed work since before the Second World War – its 1964 premiere in Liverpool, Charles Groves conducting, soon followed with hearings in Bournemouth, Glasgow, Berlin then a BBC broadcast in 1969. A pity that Ogdon never recorded a piece ideally suited to his temperament – its single movement duly taking in elements of the soulful and sardonic in a close-knit structure with Lloyd’s motivic thinking at its most resourceful. Ominous, aggressive, ultimately fatalistic, this is one of the composer’s most cohesive works and urgently warrants revival. Lloyd had enough ideas for its successor but, for reasons unstated, Ogdon never played the Second Piano Concerto that went unheard until 1984. Its single movement yields a distinct progression from trenchant ‘first movement’ via lively ‘scherzo’ then, after an elaborate cadenza, threnodic ‘slow movement’ and resolute ‘finale’ as brings the whole structure into focus while not precluding a tangible equivocation.

Not to be deterred, Lloyd pressed on with his Third Piano Concerto. Brahmsian in scale, its three movements eschew both symphonic density and virtuosic flamboyance – whether in an opening Furioso whose relative brevity belies its wealth of incident, a Lento which sustains its expansive length through imaginative interplay between soloist and orchestra and with a keen sense of atmosphere, then final Vivace that pointedly fights shy of any grand peroration as it heads to a decisive if hardly affirmative close. The piece remained unheard until 1988, whereas the Fourth Piano Concerto had made it to the Royal Festival Hall four years earlier as part of the artistically lauded while commercially disastrous Great British Music Festival. The three movements find Lloyd attempting to banish painful memories in favour of a more relaxed but still restive discourse – hence the poignancy behind the geniality of the opening Allegro, suffused pathos of a central Larghetto that is its undoubted highlight, then animated final Vivace whose spirited ending is offset by the soulful Lento interlude which precedes it.

Hardly had Lloyd finished this last of his piano concertos when he wrote the first of his violin concertos. As the booklet note suggests, its scoring for woodwind and brass has the urbanity of a divertimento or serenade – which holds good for the sanguine opening movement and its plaintive successor, whose cor anglais melody is one of Lloyd’s most potent ideas, but less so for a rather prolix eliding of scherzo and finale. More convincing overall is the Second Violin Concerto, its resonant scoring for strings and obliquely spiritual programme demonstrably to the fore in the initial Lento with its plangent chorale. After an impulsive scherzo and eloquent slow movement, the final Vivace reaches a close whose joyfulness is never contrived. A fine piece, but the Cello Concerto is one of Lloyd’s finest. His penultimate work feels valedictory in tone, its seven continuous sections outlining a four-movement sequence whose clarity of expression is abetted by its scoring for modest forces, and whose subtle range of mood makes the final evanescence more affecting. A professional performance in the UK is well overdue.

Does it all work?

Pretty much. Those aspects of the piano concertos which do not quite succeed are due more to recordings which, scrupulously prepared and lucidly rendered, lack a degree of intensity in their execution. That 1969 broadcast of Scapegoat confirms what is lacking here, but Martin Roscoe is never less than attentive in the first three concertos and Kathryn Stott brings a deft touch to the fourth. Cristina Anghelescu plays with dexterity and no mean insight in the violin concertos, while Anthony Ross is fully attuned to the fatalistic restraint of the Cello Concerto.

Is it recommended?

Yes, but listeners unfamiliar with Lloyd’s symphonies and choral works should hear these in the first instance. Lyrita’s presentation, with objectively enthusiastic notes by Paul Conway, is up to its customary standards and those who are acquiring this series should be well satisfied.

Listen & Buy

For further information visit the dedicated George Lloyd page at the Nimbus website

Published post no.2,222 – Thursday 27 June 2024

On Record – English Symphony Orchestra, English String Orchestra, Kenneth Woods – Robert Saxton: Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh & The Resurrection of the Soldiers (Nimbus)

Posted on by
Reply

English Symphony Orchestra, English String Orchestra (The Resurrection) / Kenneth Woods

Robert Saxton
Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh (2023)
The Resurrection of the Soldiers (2016)

Nimbus Alliance NI6447 [47’17’’]
Co-Producers Phil Rowlands and Tim Burton
Recorded 7 April 2021 (The Resurrection) and 7 March 2023 (Scenes) at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods continue their 21st Symphony Project with this major work from Robert Saxton, here coupled with one of his earlier pieces in what is a welcome and valuable addition to the discographies of composer, conductor and orchestra.

What’s the music like?

His output now as extensive as it is diverse, Saxton had written little purely orchestral music for several decades and few works that might be called ‘symphonic’, but listeners with longer memories may recall the Dante-inspired ‘chamber symphony’ The Circles of Light (1986) or taut incisiveness of the sinfonietta-like Elijah’s Violin (1988). Speaking only recently, Saxton stated a reluctance to call Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh a symphony and yet the piece, a result of many years’ thought about the musical treatment right for one of the oldest surviving written texts, has a formal cohesion and expressive unity which are demonstrably symphonic. Scored for pairs of woodwind, horns and trumpets with timpani and strings, its textural clarity imbues any illustrative aspect with an abstract focus amply sustained over its five movements.

Amounting to a continuous narrative, these head from the fluid motion of ‘Prologue’ to ‘The Journey to the Forest of Cedar’, whose passacaglia-like unfolding finds this composer at his most harmonically alluring, then on to ‘From dawn to dusk’ in a scherzo as animated as it is evocative. ‘Lament’ distils a tangible emotional impact from its gradual if inexorable build-up, moving into ‘Apotheosis’ which expands upon the melodic potential of earlier ideas and sees a powerful culmination with the ‘hero’ forced to seek immortality through other means.

Saxton’s approaching the issue of religious belief indirectly, or even obliquely, is as central to this piece as to the earlier The Resurrection of the Soldiers. Inspired by Stanley Spencer’s series of paintings which depict soldiers emerging from their graves on Judgement Day, this might be described as ‘prelude, fugue and threnody’ – the sombre introduction soon reaching an expressive apex, from where the intricate yet cumulative middle phase builds inexorably to a plangent climax; the ensuing slow section gradually ascends linearly or texturally to an ending whose affirmation feels pervaded by anguish. Both these works have the concept of redemption as their focal-point – albeit one which cannot be gained without effort and, even then, should never be taken as read. Tonality, indeed, as the corollary to travelling in hope.

Does it all work?

It does. Four decades on from those flamboyant pieces which established his name, Saxton here evinces an orchestral mastery which will hopefully find an outlet in further such pieces – whether, or not, ‘symphonic’. More overtly tonal it might have become, his music still poses considerable challenges whether technical or interpretative. Suffice to add these are met with finesse and conviction by Woods and the ESO, who are fully conversant with its elusive but always accessible idiom. The composer could hardly have wished for a more tangible QED.

Is it recommended?

It is, not least as enhanced by the composer’s succinct introductory notes and the conductor’s pertinent thoughts on ‘Conducting Saxton’. It reinforces, moreover, that the 21SP is not about retrenchment – rather, the enrichment of this most archetypal of genres is what really matters.

Listen & Buy

This album is released on Friday 5 July, but you can listen to samples and explore purchase options on the Presto website. Click on the names for more on conductor Kenneth Woods, the English Symphony Orchestra and composer Robert Saxton

Published post no.2,220 – Tuesday 25 June 2024

On Record – James Turnbull, Poppy Beddoe, Mira Marton, BBC NoW / Matthew Taylor: Matthew Taylor: Orchestral Music Vol.2 (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

James Turnbull (oboe), Poppy Beddoe (clarinet), Mira Marton (violin), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Matthew Taylor

Matthew Taylor
Symphony no.6 Op.62 (2021)
Oboe Concerto Op.60 (2020-21)
Clarinet Concertino Op.63 (2021)
Violin Concertino Op.52 (2016)

Toccata Classics TOCC0708 [69’32’’]
Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Andrew Smillie
Recorded 17 & 18 December 2022 in Hoddinott Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its now extensive coverage of Matthew Taylor (b.1964) with this coupling of his most recent symphony alongside three of his concertante pieces, two of them here played by the soloists for whom they were written and all with the composer conducting.

What’s the music like?

Those familiar with Taylor’s symphonic output will recall that the Fifth ended with an adagio of powerfully inward emotion, and the Sixth Symphony picks up on this directly. Dedicated to the memory of Malcolm Arnold in the year of his centenary, it is his contemporary Robert Simpson (a pervasive influence on Taylor’s formative years) who comes most to mind in an opening movement whose alternation between relative darkness and lightness is informed by a gradually cumulative momentum the more striking given this music’s textural transparency.

The second of three continuous movements centres on a fugal theme of affecting poise, one whose transformation is made more so by orchestration where piano and harp confirm their substantive rather than merely colouristic roles. Only with the finale does Arnold’s presence assert itself – the jazzy cast of its clarinet theme facilitating allusions to, if not quotations of, several of this composer’s salient works prior to a culmination that, launched by a crescendo of mounting anticipation, rounds off the whole work with a decidedly no-nonsense terseness.

Of the other pieces, the Oboe Concerto is most substantial. Imaginatively scored for Haydn-esque forces, with cors anglais instead of oboes, it inverts the expected order of movements with the first of these featuring a central section whose intermezzo-like deftness offsets the sombreness either side. There follows a Scherzo which further develops the primary motifs with dextrous virtuosity, before an Adagio affords not just closure but a sense of fulfilment   through the emotional raptness such as pervades this most eloquent among Taylor’s finales.

Taylor having earlier written concertos for clarinet and violin, the present works are lighter in their overall mood but not slighter in actual content. Thus, the Violin Concertino intersperses respectively trenchant and lively outer sections with an ‘aria’ of wistful elegance, whereas the Clarinet Concertino frames its pert amalgam of slow movement and scherzo with an Andante of autumnal repose then a finale of artless naivety. Brahms is mentioned in the latter instance, though the late woodwind sonatas of Saint-Saëns and Poulenc might be felt equally apposite.

Does it all work?

It does, and not only because of Taylor’s sill in writing from a soloistic or orchestral vantage. Each of the concertante pieces confirms his feeling for the instrument in question, while the symphony reaffirms his status among the leading exponents of this genre from the past half-century. The three soloists are audibly attuned to his music, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales continues the favourable impression it made with his Fourth Symphony (recorded by Kenneth Woods on Nimbus NI6406) by similarly responding to the composer’s direction.

Is it recommended?

It is, and not least when the booklet features informative notes by Taylor himself. This release is dedicated to the memory of Tom Hammond (1974-2021), trombonist and conductor whose untimely death deprived the musical world of a gifted musician and exemplary human being.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to samples and explore purchase options on the Toccata Classics website Click on the names for more on artists James Turnbull, Poppy Beddoe and Mira Marton, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and composer / conductor Matthew Taylor

Published post no.2,219 – Monday 24 June 2024