Tag Archives: NMC Recordings

On Record – Clare O’Connell: Light Flowing (NMC Recordings)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Cellist Clare O’Connell releases the Light Flowing album, which, in the words of the press release, is “inspired and tied together conceptually by ideas of light, depth, simplicity, the search for a perfect line, and capturing an otherworldly beauty that these carefully chosen composers represent within their different sound worlds.”

She looked for an ‘introverted introspective simplicity’, which is found through new compositions from five composers.

What’s the music like?

The music here is rather bewitching, in the best examples drawing the listener into a spell, with O’Connell playing beautifully.

Edmund Finnis contributes two examples, beginning with the Three Solos, expressive miniatures that O’Connell inhabits easily, especially the playful second solo with its pizzicato. Finnis allows for expansive thought in the outer two movements.

Meanwhile Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch contributes the imaginative four-part suite Opened, its movements based on the pitch of each of the cello’s four strings. Although it starts from the lowest ‘C’ string and works up, the pitches are closely linked and longer, sustained drones are used. The colours are subtly shaded, the musical motifs rich in thought and execution.

Natalie Klouda’s Uhteare is an excellent piece, packing a strong emotional punch but also falling naturally under the scope of the instrument, with a terrific end – O’Connell’s tone in the high register as sure and pure as it could be.

Emily Hall’s You Sail To The Sky is a meditative space, while Nick Martin’s two Vocalises find a hypnotic and compelling train of thought. The first floats down with delicate harmonics like a feather falling slowly through the sky, while the second floats most attractively, O’Connell’s cello ideal for its songlike profile. Prayerful, and lost in thought towards the end in contemplation, it disappears beyond the horizon.

Zenith introduces a timely change of sonorities, introducing the harp of Eleanor Turner, which has a more Japanese feel. An engaging discourse between the two instruments, it grabs the listener especially towards the end where O’Connell’s cello climbs higher. Then the sound descends to the depths as Marianne Schofield’s grainy double bass winds through a shadowy encounter as the first of three Figures Of Eight, Finnis writing a slight but compelling second movement drawing in the listener’s ear. The two instruments circle each other with pizzicato figures that get more insistent but stay largely quiet in the second movement, while the third has a richer, mellow sound

Does it all work?

It does, a thoughtfully planned recital executed with no little technical expertise.

Is it recommended?

Yes. The literature for solo cello is a rich body of work, right back to Bach in the 18th century, but this wide range of works illustrates how, with imagination, it is still possible for composers to explore new paths. Clare O’Connell proves a compelling communicator in bringing the pieces to life.

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Published post no.2,597 – Thursday 17 July 2025

On Record – Imogen Holst: Discovering Imogen (NMC)

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BBC Singers (What Man Is He?, Festival Anthem), BBC Concert Orchestra / Alice Farnham

Imogen Holst
Persephone (1929)
Variations on ‘Lorth to Depart’ (1962)
What Man is He? (c1940)
Allegro Assai (1927)
On Westhall Hill (1935)
Suite for String Orchestra (1943)
Festival Anthem (1946)

NMC Recordings NMCD280 [75’01”] English texts included
Producer Colin Matthews Engineers Marvin Ware, Robert Winter, Callum Lawrence
Recorded 27-29 January 2024 at Maida Vale Studio One, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

As its executive producer Colin Matthews notes in his introduction, NMC would likely not exist had it not been for Imogen Holst (1907-84) setting up the Holst Foundation prior to her death – so making this release of her larger-scale works the more appropriate, and welcome.

What’s the music like?

The present anthology affords what seems a plausible overview of its composer’s output. The earliest piece here is Allegro Assai, evidently planned as the opening movement of a suite for strings that progressed no further, but which proves characterful and assured on its own terms. Such potential feels well on the way to being realized in Persephone, an overture (albeit more akin to a tone poem) given in rehearsal by Malcolm Sargent, with the influence of Ravel (and indirectly of Vaughan Williams) balanced by the dextrous handling of motifs across a formal evolution such as relates the myth in immediate and individual terms. That this went unheard until the present recording was likely as much a loss to the musical public as to Holst herself.

Underlining its composer’s skill in writing for amateurs, On Westhall Hill is an atmospheric piece the more appealing through its brevity and modesty of scoring. Deriving its text from the Book of Wisdom, What Man Is He? traverses a range of emotions from the sombre, via the introspective, to the affirmative in a setting as searching as it is fervent. Most impressive, however, is the Suite for String Orchestra composed for a ‘portrait’ concert at Wigmore Hall. The four movements unfold from a diaphanous Prelude, via a fluid and astringent Fugue then an Intermezzo whose ruminative warmth hints at qualities rather more fatalistic, to a Jig which convincingly rounds off the whole work with its mounting energy and resolve.

Written in the wake of the Second World War, Festival Anthem went unheard at this time but could be thought a ‘song of thanksgiving’. Adapted from Psalm 104 (‘Praise the Lord, O my soul’), it seamlessly integrates soloistic with choral passages prior to a calmly fulfilled close. The latest work here, Variations on ‘Loth to Depart’ takes a 17th-century tune as harmonized by Giles Farnaby as basis for five variations – the initial four respectively trenchant, eloquent, wistful and incisive; prior to a relatively extended chaconne as distils a pathos the more acute for its understatement. A string quartet is combined resourcefully with double string orchestra in music which can at least hold its own in the context of a distinctive genre in British music.

Does it all work?

It does indeed. It is all too easy to think of Imogen Holst as one who never fully realized her potential in the face of life-long teaching and administrative commitments, but the range of what is heard amply indicates her creative legacy to be one worth exploring in depth. The recordings, moreover, could hardly be bettered in terms of their overall conviction – Alice Farnham securing a laudable response form the BBC Concert Orchestra and, in the choral pieces, BBC Singers. Hopefully other ensembles, professional or amateur, will follow suit.

Is it recommended?

It is indeed. Sound is unexceptionally fine, with informative notes from Christopher Tinker. Alongside the NMC release of her chamber music for strings (D236), and that on Harmonia Mundi of choral music (HMU907576), this is a fine demonstration of Imogen Holst’s legacy.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to samples and explore purchase options on the NMC Recordings website. For more information on the artists, click on the names to visit the websites of the BBC Singers, BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Alice Farnham, while a dedicated resource can be found for Imogen Holst herself

Published post no.2,374 – Tuesday 26 November 2024

On Record – BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins, Sir Andrew Davis – Payne: Visions and Journeys (NMC)

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BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins, Sir Andrew Davis (Visions and Journeys)

Anthony Payne
Orchestral Variations: The Seeds Long Hidden (1992-4)
Half-Heard in the Stillness (1987)
Visions and Journeys (2002)

NMC D281 [62’15’’]
Producers Philip Tagney, Ann McKay (Visions and Journeys) Engineers Simon Hancock, Philip Burwell (Visions and Journeys)
Broadcast performances on 22 September 2006, Maida Vale Studios, London; live performance 9 August 2002 Royal Albert Hall, London (Visions and Journeys)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

NMC issues a tribute to Anthony Payne (1936-2021) featuring three of the most representative among his mature orchestral works and so makes for a viable overview, featuring an orchestra and conductors who between them gave numerous performances of his music in his lifetime.

What’s the music like?

Earliest here is Half-Heard in the Stillness, a short yet evocative tone poem making use of the Memorial Chimes which Elgar wrote for the Loughborough carillon in 1923. By this stage in his career, Payne had evolved an idiom that effortlessly but meaningfully elides between post -war Modernism and a late Romanticism (not necessarily British in derivation) such as gives his later output its tonal and expressive lustre. The outcome is ‘landscape’ music that intimates far more than it states, to an extent which the senior composer would surely have appreciated.

Most extensive of these pieces, The Seeds Long Hidden is a sequence of orchestral variations which outlines an autobiographical trajectory. Other than the opening gesture from Brahms’s First Symphony (a hearing of which in 1947 determined the course of Payne’s life thereafter), the works alluded to over the course of its 10 variations are not quoted directly but rather flit across the music and so inform the context from which the ‘theme’ variously emerges. While there is a constant and productive eddying between relative stasis and dynamism, moreover, the overall cumulative thrust seems one of clarification towards an emotional climax of self-realization which quickly recedes into the calm equivocation of the closing bars. If this is, as the composer states, a ‘musical autobiography’, it is an overtly self-effacing and oblique one.

As the first major work that Payne wrote in the aftermath of his realization of Elgar’s ‘Third Symphony’, Visions and Journeys is inevitably bound up with the re-establishing of his own idiom: a statement of intent to be pursued over what became the final phase of his creativity. Nominally inspired by frequent journeys he and his wife – the soprano Jane Manning – made to the Isles of Scilly, this is in no sense pictorial or illustrative in intent. That said, its overall follow-through from unforced anticipation, via understated fulfilment, to underlying regret could not otherwise have been made explicit; the degree to which this is transcended being both the music’s purpose and its primary fascination. A blueprint, indeed, for the select few works that were to come and which reinforced Payne’s standing as a composer of substance.

Does it all work?

Yes, as long as one approaches these works not as compromise between competing aesthetic tendencies but as their synthesis in music which is often eloquent and always appealing. The playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra could hardly be bettered, with Martyn Brabbins and the late Sir Andrew Davis always committed in their advocacy. Occupying that amorphous middle-ground between the rarified and accessible, Payne’s music neither rejects nor courts popularity but the rewards are considerable for those willing to spend time in its company.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, in the hope a follow-up release which features Spirit’s Harvest (initially intended for inclusion here) and Payne’s culminative statement Of Land, Sea and Sky may yet be possible. The composer’s introductory notes explain everything while giving absolutely nothing away.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the NMC website. For further information, click on the names for more on Martyn Brabbins, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and composer Anthony Payne

Published post no.2,218 – Sunday 23 June 2024

On Record – Richard Baker: The Tyranny of Fun (NMC Recordings)

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Richard Baker
Crank (1994)a
Motet II (2020)b
The Tyranny of Fun (2012)c
Angelus (2004)d
Learning to Fly (1999)e
To Keep a True Lent (2001)f
Hommagesquisse (2008)g
Hwyl fawr ffriniau (2016, rev. 2020)h

hMelinda Maxwell (oboe); eOliver Janes (clarinet); bNye Parry (live electronics); aRichard Baker (diatonic music box); dThree Strange Angels (Richard Benjafield and Chris Brannick, percussion); fChoir of King’s College, Cambridge / Stephen Cleobury; bCHROMA Ensemble / Richard Baker; ceghBirmingham Contemporary Music Group / Finnigan Downie Dear

NMC D275 [60’37’’]
Producers/Engineers David Lefeber, fBen Collingwood
Recorded d19 April 2004 at St Giles’s Church, London; f29 February 2004 at Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge; b 4 August 2022 at Menuhin Hall, Cobham; cegh5 & 6 November 2022 at the CBSO Centre, Birmingham; a10 December 2023 at Parry-Williams Building, University of Aberystwyth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

NMC adds to its invaluable Debut Discs series with this timely release devoted to the music of Richard Baker, expertly realized by ensembles and musicians with which has been associated – not least the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group – whether as composer or conductor.

What’s the music like?

Prominent on the new music scene for over a quarter-century, Baker (b.1972) is equally well regarded as a conductor – notably for the German premiere of Gerald Barry’s The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit or the world premiere of Philip Venable’s 4.48 Psychosis – but he has built a select catalogue (published by Composers Edition), the variety of which is duly in evidence. BCMG has been central to his creative and executive work, so it is good to see this ensemble featured here – not least in two pieces commissioned as part of its Sound Investment scheme.

Baker was among numerous UK figures who undertook their postgraduate studies with Louis Andriessen, Crank being a whimsically oblique tribute in its unfolding of multiple pulses over a consistent tempo. The Dutch composer is also an influence behind Learning to Fly as takes its cue from those novels by Paul Auster for this compact concerto; the tonal range of basset clarinet tellingly to the fore in the eventful interplay of ‘Boisterous’, the subdued acceptance of ‘Somnolent’ and renewed animation of ‘Suddenly awake’ with its epiphanic closing phase.

Choral music features sparingly in Baker’s output, but his motet To Keep a True Lent captures Robert Herrick’s message unerringly. Hardly less affecting is his eliding between anxiety and repose in the dextrous percussion duo Angelus, while the punningly entitled Hommagesquisse serves as a laconic tribute to Pierre Boulez in alluding to his own music and that of others he advocated as conductor. Most substantial work here, The Tyranny of Fun draws on the notion of entertainment as distraction – hence escape – from the ambiguity of existence, along with a homage to Ravel (and Edgar Allen Poe) via Balanchine across two sections whose respective emergence and subsidence, then gradually accumulating energy outline a trajectory in which any tendency towards self-gratification is curtailed by vicissitudes of an encroaching reality.

The other pieces reflect aspects of Wales where Baker now lives. What translates as Goodbye Friends draws Edwin Christy’s song into a resourceful tribute, while Motet II makes reference to Welsh culture ‘then and now’ across six aphoristic movements understated yet provocative.

Does it all work?

Yes, inasmuch as this collection confirms the distinctiveness of Baker’s musical idiom across three decades of his composing. The recordings prove as assured as might be expected given these are artists with whom he has often collaborated, Oliver Janes taking time out as principal clarinettist of City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to demonstrate his prowess with the basset instrument, and Melinda Maxwell underlining why she has long been among the UK’s leading oboists. Gratifying too that a reading by the late Stephen Cleobury could be included.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, and those acquiring this release should be encouraged to investigate other of Baker’s works available from NMC – notably his breakthrough piece Los Rabanos (NMCD076), or his four diverse contributions to that label’s extensive download project Digital Discoveries.

Listen & Buy

To explore purchase options, visit the NMC Recordings website – and click on Richard Baker for his own website. Meanwhile for more on the performers, click on the names – Melinda Maxwell, Oliver James, Richard Benjafield, Chris Brannick, Nye Parry, King’s College Choir, Stephen Cleobury, Finnigan Downie Dear, CHROMA and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Published post no.2,130 – Wednesday 27 March 2024

Out today…Emily Howard’s Torus

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Emily Howard‘s new album, Torus – as reviewed on Arcana – is released today.

When I spoke to Emily about the piece itself back in 2018, she said, “When I created Torus, I imagined I was on the surface of the shape, travelling around and around in one direction, and encountering different landscapes as I went. Around 14 minutes into the work, there is a significant shift and a complete change of musical soundworld, and this is where I had instead imagined a rotation in the other direction. So considering mathematical shapes in this way does help me to define musical shapes and structure in my compositions”.

You can explore buying options for Torus at the NMC website, and watch a short video about it below: