Born in Birmingham, Alpesh Chauhan studied cello under Eduardo Vassallo at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester before continuing at the RNCM to pursue the prestigious Master’s Conducting Course. Alpesh has studied with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, participated in masterclasses with Juanjo Mena, Vasily Petrenko and Jac van Steen, and was mentored by Andris Nelsons and Edward Gardner in his post as Assistant Conductor of the CBSO 2014-16. Newly appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker from the 21/22 season, he is also Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of Birmingham Opera Company. He frequently appears as guest conductor with acclaimed international orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National d’Île de France, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

For this, his debut recording for Chandos, he has chosen a collection of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasias, alongside the Overture and Polonaise from the comic opera ‘Cherevichki’. The Tempest, from 1873 is based on the Shakespeare play, and shows that Tchaikovsky’s unique voice and style were already fully developed. Francesca da Rimini (based on the tale in Dante’s Inferno) was written only a few years later, but after Tchaikovsky had attended the premier of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Bayreuth – an influence discernible particularly in the brass chords. Cherevichki (the Slippers) is a revision of his earlier opera Vakula the Smith, based on Gogol’s Christmas Eve. Tchaikovsky’s Symphonic Ballad The Voyevoda is based on Adam Mickiewicz’s poem ‘The Ambush’, and is the first orchestral work to include the (newly invented) Celeste.

REVIEW:

Chauhan proves in this disc that he loves Tchaikovsky and is not afraid to show it, at a time when so many conductors appear embarrassed by the emotional intensity and try to tame the music, with results that are sometimes desiccated.

-- Gramophone

Nielsen’s epic Violin Concerto was premiered in Copenhagen in February 1912, by violinist Peder Møller. Nominally the work is set in two movements; both open with a slow section and move to a faster one. Whilst unusual, this could be seen as a more usual fast – slow – fast three movement form, but with an extensive slow introduction to the first movement. The music moves quickly from one idea to the next, and overall has a bold, playful and optimistic feel. In stark contrast, although written only a few years later, the fourth symphony is more cohesive and unified as a work.

Written against the background of the first world war, the work is a celebration of life itself. Just before the premier in 1916, Nielsen described it as: ‘Music is Life, and, like it, inextinguishable.’ Composed in the usual four movement form, each movement continues from the last without a break. The final movement features two sets of timpani battling each other across the orchestra. The recording was made in Bergen’s Grieghallen, in Surround Sound, and is available as a hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

REVIEWS:

Nielsen's Violin Concerto couldn’t have a better advocate than James Ehnes: strong in his lyricism when he needs to be, alert to all dynamics and a sense of fantasy which is outstanding in the two cadenzas.

-- BBC Music Magazine

James Ehnes – that most elegant and unflashy of players – seems to relish all that is unexpected about the piece...Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic give it real backbone and play like its greatest champions.

-- Gramophone

In Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, Gardner succeeds handily. The orchestra plays outstandingly well for him in all departments and he keeps the symphony moving. This is appropriate because all the movements are connected. I found his slightly quicker tempo for the second movement convincing with the woodwinds as delectable as one would expect and the dynamics quieter than in some recordings.

-- MusicWeb International

Without question born a little too late in a century of huge upheavals, Pierre Sancan has almost completely disappeared from our memories. He nevertheless occupied a place at the heart of the history of French music in the second half of the twentieth century: composer, pianist, teacher, and an extremely endearing personality, as one will discover on this disc.

This program of the Piano concerto, orchestral works, works for solo piano, and the flute Sonatine (played by Adam Walker) serves as a personal tribute to Sancan from both pianist and conductor, and will hopefully help to raise awareness of this gifted composer.

For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging program.

REVIEW:

Seventy-seven minutes of British music for flute and piano might at first glance seem like 40 minutes too much. But that ’s without taking on board the nimble and dazzling skills of flautist Adam Walker, or the individual strengths of the works presented...a new pleasure is never far away in this most accomplished recital, full of the sounds of spring.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Lieder ohne Worte – Songs without Words – seems to be a description invented by Mendelssohn himself for these short, lyrical and descriptive piano pieces which he composed so prolifically. Indeed, it is arguable that these works define his pianistic output in the same way that the Mazurka defines Chopin’s. Publishing them in sets of six, Mendelssohn composed Lieder ohne Worte throughout his career – they proved a type of composition to which he had a lifetime attraction. For the first volume, rather than approaching them chronologically or as complete sets, Peter Donohoe selected pieces to build a satisfying programme. Here he does the same with all the pieces that remain.

In addition, the album features three free-standing significant works. The 17 Variations serieuses, from 1841, is one of Mendelssohn’s largest solo piano works, and was published in an album to raise funds for a monument to Beethoven. The Phantasie on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ is a much earlier work, based on the Irish folk melody that – with added words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore – took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. The album concludes with Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

For the third volume in their cycle of Schubert’s symphonies, Edward Gardner and the CBSO turn to the first and fourth symphonies. Composed in 1813, when Schubert was just sixteen, the First Symphony admirably demonstrates the young composer’s grasp of symphonic form and technique, and whilst the influences of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven are clearly audible, the spirit of Schubert’s own distinctive voice is certainly in evidence.

Composed three years later, in 1816, the ‘Tragic’ Fourth Symphony is scored for larger forces and is much more ambitious in outlook – Schubert seemingly anxious to create a more substantial work. He took more trouble to unify his thematic material across the four movements, and the symphony is clearly closer to the style of his later works. The Overture to his opera ‘Fierrabras’ completes the album, which was recorded in Birmingham Town Hall

As with the previous volumes in their survey of the quartets of Weinberg, the Arcadia Quartet have selected a pair of works from contrasting stylistic periods of the composer’s output. The Fourth Quartet was composed in 1945, shortly after Weinberg had moved to Moscow. The Quartet presents an abstract, psychologically universal picture – a testimony both to the composer’s artistic maturity and to the affinity that Weinberg had discovered with Shostakovich. The Sixteenth Quartet was composed between 1 January and 15 February 1981. It carries a dedication to Weinberg’s sister, Ester, who had perished following the Nazi invasion of Poland and would have been sixty that year. Typical of his later compositional style, the writing is more muscular, harmonically complex, and intense.

John Wilson and Sinfonia of London release their second album of Rachmaninoff. The Second Symphony was mostly composed in Dresden – where Rachmaninoff was escaping the political and professional pressures of Russia – in 1906 – 07. An hour’s worth of music, the symphony is one of his largest works after the operas, and is widely viewed as one of his greatest works. It was possibly of some significance to the composer, following the less than auspicious début of his First Symphony (which he withdrew after the première). First performed in St Petersburg and Moscow, conducted by the composer, the Second Symphony was an immediate success with audiences and critics alike, and remains a mainstay of the orchestral repertoire to this day. Rachmaninoff dedicated the score to his teacher Sergei Taneyev, who was a pupil of Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff composed the Prélude in C sharp minor in 1892, originally for piano, at the beginning of his career. Stokowski’s orchestration, performed here, whilst not the only one in existence, is certainly the best known and arguably the most successful.

Whilst the English composer Edmund Rubbra is best known for his symphonic output, he composed a good deal of vocal music, and wrote songs throughout his compositional life. Rubbra studied with Cyril Scott and Gustav Holst, and was a great friend of his contemporary Gerald Finzi. The songs are notable for their variation in accompaniment (less than half are set for piano, the rest for harp, string quartet, string orchestra, or full orchestra). This album contains all his published songs with piano and harp accompaniment, and includes the first and last songs of the composer’s output. Lucy Crowe, Claire Barnett-Jones, and Marcus Farnsworth are the three singers on the album, Catrin Finch (harp) and Iain Burnside (piano) the accompanists. Timothy Ridout (viola) joins for the Two Sonnets by William Alabaster, Op. 87.

CONTENTS:

• Rubbra: Rosa Mundi, Op. 2
• Rubbra: Cradle Song, Op. 8 No. 1
• Rubbra: Nod
• Rubbra: Orpheus with his Lute, Op. 8 No. 2
• Rubbra: Who is Silvia? Op. 8 No. 3
• Rubbra: Out in the dark, Op. 13 No. 1
• Rubbra: It was a lover, Op. 13 No. 3
• Rubbra: The Night, Op. 14
• Rubbra: Rune of Hospitality
• Rubbra: A Duan of Barra
• Rubbra: A Widow Bird Sate Mourning, Op. 28
• Rubbra: A Prayer
• Rubbra: Songs (2), Op. 22
• Rubbra: In Dark Weather, Op. 33
• Rubbra: Invocation to Spring, Op. 17 No. 2
• Rubbra: Two Sonnets by William Alabaster
• Rubbra: Songs (2), Op. 4
• Rubbra: A Hymn to the Virgin, Op. 13 No. 2
• Rubbra: The Jade Mountain, Op. 116
• Rubbra: Nocturne, Op. 54
• Rubbra: Salve, Regina, Op. 119
• Rubbra: No Swan So Fine, Op. 91
• Rubbra: Fly Envious Time, Op. 148
• Rubbra: Psalms (3), Op. 61
• Rubbra: Dear Liza, Op. 7

REVIEW:

Soprano Lucy Crowe and baritone Marcus Farnsworth sing with tonal beauty, clear diction, and great sensitivity for the music and text. Pianist Iain Burnside is a marvelous collaborator, as are harpist Catrin Finch and violist Timothy Ridout. The booklet includes complete song texts and superb liner notes by Jonathan Clinch. [Rubbra] his songs are the product of a thoughtful and sensitive composer, and well worth exploration.

-- Fanfare

Since its formation in 1972 the Brodsky Quartet has performed more than 3000 concerts on the major concert stages of the world and has released more than seventy recordings. A natural curiosity and insatiable desire to explore have propelled the group in many artistic directions and continue to ensure it not only a place at the very forefront of the international chamber music scene but also a rich and varied musical existence.

The cellist, Jacqueline Thomas, writes: ‘The Brodsky Quartet celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2022. Looking back, I find it wonderful that ten- and twelve-year-olds were already infused with passion and with a belief in the longevity that is now playing out. Two of us remain from the beginning; one joined as we turned professional, forty years ago, and our new fourth member has trodden her own similar path in the endlessly fulfilling life that is the string quartet. It has become something of a tradition that we release a compilation disc once every ten years, and so now, in our Golden Anniversary year, we have assembled a playlist from past and new arrangements, taking inspiration from the old days and even revamping some of our childhood efforts.’

Páll Ísólfsson was the first director of the Reykjavík Music School, which opened in 1930. Like other musicians, he was forced by the lack of opportunity in Iceland to study abroad but, unlike others, he was able to return and work as the Organist at Reykjavík Cathedral to support his activities as a composer. His music for the early Ibsen play The Feast at Solhaug, performed in 1943 in Norwegian on Norway’s National day, was his theatrical début. This was followed in 1945 by the more ambitious score for Úr Myndabók Jónasar Hallgrímssonar. Jórunn Viðar started her advanced training at Ísólfsson’s conservatory, followed by studies in Berlin and then at the Juilliard School. In New York she met a fellow Icelander and dance student, Sigríður Ármann. The two of them collaborated on Eldur (Fire), which would be the first ballet for the new National Theatre in Reykjavík, presented in May 1950. Their second collaboration for the National Theatre, Ólafur Liljurós, opened in 1952 and is based on a traditional Nordic legend.

The BBC Philharmonic and its new Chief Conductor, John Storgårds, follow their previous release of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony with this album of Symphonies Nos 12 and 15. Subtitled ‘The Year 1917’, the Twelfth Symphony was a project which Shostakovich had been planning and discussing for two decades – a symphony about Lenin. The first movement, ‘Revolutionary Petrograd’, depicts the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd in April 1917 and his meetings with the working people of the city. The second, ‘Razliv’, commemorates the site of Lenin’s retreat to the north of the city. ‘Aurora’, the third movement, refers to the Russian battleship the revolutionary mutinous crew of which fired the first shot of the attack on the Winter Palace.

Finally, ‘The Dawn of Humanity’ celebrates the ultimate victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Musically, the Twelfth seems to regress to a more simplistic musical language than that of the immediately preceding Symphony – which some commentators ascribe to Shostakovich’s joining the Communist Party and perhaps trying harder to meet its expectations. The Fifteenth (and last) Symphony was written entirely in July 1971, at a composer’s rest home in Repino, north-west of Leningrad. It was his first non-programmatic symphony since the Tenth, and Shostakovich was wary of discussing the meaning of it, but eventually commented that it might be understood as representing the journey from life to death.

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately trained at Chetham’s School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the International Opera School of the Royal College of Music. Having won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, she attended the prestigious Academy of the Verbier Festival. She writes of this project: ‘It has been my great pleasure to record with Joseph once again. We have long shared a mutual passion for early-twentieth-century-romantic Lieder and talked of making a disc including songs by Mahler and Strauss. The opportunity to discover and research lesser-known composers from their era has been thrilling and fascinating. As the world endured the pandemic, we all experienced fear and danger and loss in a way that most of our generation never did before, on such a global scale. Joseph and I felt drawn to reflect on grief, mortality, and bereavement.’ The two lesser-known composers featured in the recording are Johanna Müller-Hermann (who studied with several of the most prominent teachers in Vienna – Josef Labor, Guido Adler, Alexander Zemlinsky, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Franz Schmidt) and Margarete Schweikert, who’s upbringing and life in Karlsruhe and studies with Joseph Haas in Stuttgart could hardly provide a greater contrast – clearly audible in their music.

CONTENTS:

• Müller-Hermann: Wie eine Vollmondnacht, Op. 20 No. 4
• Müller-Hermann: Der letzte abend, Op. 2 No. 4
• Strauss, R: Befreit, Op. 39 No. 4
• Strauss, R: Allerseelen, Op. 10 No. 8
• Schweikert: Wolke I
• Schweikert: Totenhausen
• Schweikert: Zusammen sterben
• Strauss, R: Auf ein Kind, Op. 47 No. 1
• Strauss, R: Rückleben, Op. 47 No. 3
• Strauss, R: Morgen, Op. 27 No. 4
• Müller-Hermann: Die Stille Stadt, Op. 4 No. 1
• Müller-Hermann: Herbst, Op. 20 No. 2
• Müller-Hermann: In Memoriam, Op. 28 No. 5
• Schweikert: Unser Haus
• Schweikert: Die Entschlafenen
• Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
• Müller-Hermann: Widmung, Op. 20 No. 1
• Schweikert: Einem Vorangegangenen

REVIEW:

Throughout Whately and Middleton prove highly persuasive guides; the pianist bringing the accompaniments vividly to life and the mezzo fully committed to the works and impressive, in particular, in getting the texts across.

-- Gramophone

Volume 7 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Mozart piano concerto features two of the late concertos – nos. 24 and 25 - coupled with a spirited reading of the Marriage of Figaro overture from Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata. Concerto no. 24 was written whilst he was busily composing the Marriage of Figaro between October 1785 and the premier in Vienna in May 1786. One of only two of his piano concertos in a minor key, there are many unusual features in this extraordinary work, including the deliberately ambivalent tonality of the opening melody, which uses all 12 tones of the scale (a pre-echo of serialism??!). Concerto no. 25 was probably first performed in Vienna in December 1876, and was certainly a success as there were many repeated performances in the following years (including one by Beethoven in 1795). Recorded in Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Bavouzet plays a Yamaha CFX nine-foot Concert Grand Piano.

REVIEWS:

Bavouzet uses a modern concert grand, with the orchestra avoiding excessive vibrato but otherwise playing in today’s mellow-toned instrumental style. The superlative collective result shows that period performance issues need not be an overriding concern, if the feeling for the idiom itself is so engagingly right.

Described by Gramophone as ‘an album of joyous, imaginative music-making that whets the appetite for future instalments’, the first volume of the Trio Gaspard’s Haydn cycle was enthusiastically received by buyers and critics alike. As with that first volume, the Trio have designed a programme that works in its own right, and features trios from all periods of Haydn’s career. Three later works (nos. 33, 35 and 45) were all composed in 1794/5 contrast with the early trio no. 7 from 1760, whilst the trio no. 21 comes from the composer’s middle period, composed in 1784/5. The Gaspard choose to end the programme with another contemporary work reflective of the programme – in this instance For Gaspard by cellist-composer Leonid Gorokhov. Composed in two movements (as were several of Haydn’s trios) Hidden D (a play on words for the ‘Haydn D’ cello concerto) reworks numerous themes from that piece, among many others!

This keenly anticipated album from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson features two of the greatest British works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. Elgar’s ground-breaking work, commissioned for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra and premièred in 1905, is inspired by the baroque concerto grosso, and features a solo string quartet contrasted with the full symphonic string section. These orchestral forces were also adopted by Herbert Howells in his Concerto for String Orchestra, from 1938. Delius’s Late Swallows is the only piece not originally composed for string orchestra; it was arranged (from the slow movement of Delius’s String Quartet) by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby. Recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD, and digitally in Spatial Audio.

REVIEW:

As ever, the brilliance of the playing makes this essential listening, the precision and attention to detail alive and exhilarating. The entire disc holds the listener in its grip, but the last movement of the Elgar, urgent and impassioned, has you on the edge of your seat: a tour de force.

-- Guardian (UK)

A MusicWeb International Recommended Recording

I think that this is tenth disc to be issued by Chandos in their series of recordings by The Sinfonia of London under John Wilson. All are Super Audio CDs recorded at 24 bit/96 kHz, and in order to appreciate the full glory of the sound, it is necessary to play them through an SACD player, although I hasten to add that they will reproduce at CD quality when played through a standard CD player. If you have multi-channel Hi-Fi, the extra fullness of surround sound can also be experienced.

Given that the Sinfonia of London was re-established in 2018 as a recording orchestra, staffed by top players from British and international ensembles, the superb ensemble playing is not surprising, and the Chandos recording engineers have given it the very fullest of service...A mildly reverberant acoustic provides a perfect cushion for the orchestra, and, as elsewhere, the strings in the vigorous outer movements of the Howells Concerto are splendid in their unanimity and fullness of tone. The necessarily less aggressive playing in the slow movement has a lovely bloom to the playing.

The disc closes with a fine performance of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, and as in the Tallis Fantasia, I soon became aware of the extremes of dynamic achieved. This lovely, utterly memorable work is so familiar that I just sat back and let it wash over me.

The presentation of the SACD is up to Chandos’ normal high standards, with a detailed analysis of the gestation and structure of each work (particularly of the Howells) and a history of the orchestra, accompanying a brief biography of John Wilson, all in English, French and German.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

The legendary conductor Neeme Järvi celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the summer of 2022, in Tallinn, giving a series of concerts with his beloved Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This album serves not just as a commemoration of those wonderful concerts, but also as a personal calling card for this remarkable musician. The concert overture Polonia, published in 1836, may well have been inspired by Wagner’s encounters with defeated Polish nationalists in Leipzig in 1832. Wagner wrote several concert overtures during this period – whilst plans for his revolutionary operatic output were developing – including Christoph Columbus and Rule Britannia!!

Max Reger composed the Serenade in G major in 1905 – 06; it demonstrates the style and talent of this too-little-heard composer. Brahms set Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, in two movements with chorus, but then added a third, an orchestral postlude. Ave verum corpus, possibly Mozart’s best-known setting for chorus, rounds off the program.

REVIEWS:

The quality of choral singing of the Latvian State Choir is rightly celebrated, and this is a beautifully shaped performance [of the Schicksalslied], with vocal warmth and blend, and the orchestral postlude bringing a radiant conclusion.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is a marvellous recording...Although Brahms’s Schicksalslied enjoys numerous recordings, Järvi’s is distinguished by the radiance and depth of the first and last sections as well as the vehemence of the central allegro.

-- Gramophone

As well as being a thoroughly attractive concert conducted with characteristic élan by Chandos star conductor Neeme Järvi, this program represents for collectors a very useful way of acquiring a variety of pieces, some unfamiliar, some less so… this is a very tempting disc.

-- CDChoice.co.uk

Rumon Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic in this collection of lesser-known pieces by the British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold.

Born 1921, Arnold was inspired by Louis Armstrong to take up the trumpet at the age of twelve. Following study at the Royal College of Music, in London, he became Principal Trumpet of the London Philharmonic, in 1943 – a post he held (bar one season at the BBC Symphony Orchestra) until he moved to composing full time, in 1948.

Arnold was active in many genres, writing nine symphonies, two operas, five ballets, and more than 100 film scores, including The Bridge on the River Kwai for which he won an Oscar.

This album features music from across his compositional career, from Larch Trees (1943) to the Philharmonic Concerto (1976) – both works written for the London Philharmonic. His Divertimento was written for the newly formed National Youth Orchestra, whilst the BBC commissioned the Commonwealth Christmas Overture for the twenty-fifth anniversary of King George VI’s first Christmas Broadcast, in 1932. The Clarinet Concerto No. 1, expertly performed here by Michael Collins, was written for Frederick (‘Jack’) Thurston who gave the première, in 1949, at the Edinburgh Festival. The album concludes with Philip Lane’s orchestration of The Padstow Lifeboat, originally composed for brass band to celebrate the launch of a new lifeboat in Padstow in 1968.

REVIEW:

What better way to start the New Year than with a bumper disc of Malcolm Arnold at his most entertaining. The program of this recording has been somewhat dictated by music missing from the extensive Chandos catalogue of the composer, so the result is something of a seeming hotch-potch albeit a very engaging one.

Conductor Rumon Gamba and the ever-reliable BBC Philharmonic are old hands at Arnold and this style of repertoire which they play with genuine flair and engagement throughout. While none of the repertoire is new to the catalogue, four of the works are receiving only their second commercial recordings, and, with one exception, all the other recordings of these works are over twenty years old. Furthermore, most of those older recordings appear to be out of print. So even if this new disc were not as fine as it is, it would pretty much have the field to itself.

The most recorded work on this disc is the Clarinet Concerto No. 1 Op.20. The soloist here is Michael Collins, who recorded it as part of the Conifer survey back in 1988. Collins’ playing is simply superb; expressive and humorous, articulate, virtuosic. Conductor Ramon Gamba is most imaginative with his phrasing and attention to dynamics and accentuation.

The Divertimento No. 2 Op.24/75 is a great example of unaffected, unbuttoned Arnold. The flair and brio of this present recording is undeniable and affords great listening pleasure.

Near the other end of Arnold’s compositional career is the Philharmonic Concerto, Op.120 written in 1976. This is Arnold at one of his very darkest times rather desperately trying to make out that everything is just fine while the music tells a different story. Again this new performance is simply excellent – unflinchingly muscular and dynamic with an aggressive edge that seems wholly, if somewhat uncomfortably, appropriate.

The disc ends with a collective sigh of relief – the utterly brilliant Padstow Lifeboat in its orchestral transcription by Phillip Lane. The original Brass Band version is incomparable and utterly “right” but Lane’s orchestration is a delight.

So an uplifting conclusion to a disc guaranteed to raise spirits in the dank winter months with performances and recordings to match or supplant any in the catalogue. Recording dates show sessions split by the pandemic but the sound and playing is superbly consistent. A top-notch Chandos release to start the year right down to the cover photograph of the RNLB James and Catherine Macfarlane – the eponymous Padstow Lifeboat itself. Certainly a disc to show the range and quality of Arnold’s mercurial genius in all its glory.

-- MusicWeb International

Born in Liège, Belgium, in 1873, Joseph Jongen showed an outstanding precocity for music from a very early age, and was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at the extraordinarily young age of seven. He won a First Prize for fugue in 1895 and honors diplomas in piano and organ the next year. In 1897, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany, and France, where he experienced the music of Brahms and Richard Strauss, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, all of which would exert an influence on the young composer. Although he composed in numerous genres, including the symphony and concerto, as well as chamber music, instrumental pieces, and choral works, it is his output for the organ for which he is now best known.

The Serbian-American pianist Ivan Ilić helps to redress the balance with this new recording of two of Jongen’s substantial sets of Préludes for piano. The 13 Préludes, Op. 69 are expansive in nature and extremely poetic – each bears an evocative title. They are dedicated to Émile Bosquet who gave their première, in 1923. The 24 Petits Préludes dans tous les tons were begun in 1940 and (like Bach’s preludes and fugues) circle through each and every key, major and minor. Arranged in twelve pairs, the minor key following the major on the same tonic note, these works reflect Jongen’s affinity for (and mastery of) their free form, as well as demonstrating his mature compositional style.

REVIEW:

The reputation of Belgian composer, organist, and educator Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) basically rests upon one work, his Symphonie concertante for organ and orchestra. However, he composed prolifically in many genres. His solo piano works fall between Franck’s burnished chromaticism and young Scriabin’s sensuous textures while flirting with Debussy and Ravel. Such a style works best when served up in small doses, such as in the Preludes Op. 69.

Jongen may not be a memorable tunesmith, and his phraseology tends to be square, but his exquisite harmonic sense and idiomatic, well-crafted handling of the keyboard more than compensates. In the Op. 60 group, you have, on one hand, Eau tranquille’s gently persistent double notes that contrast to Appassionato’s hammered-out chords that step right out of the finale of Scriabin’s Third sonata.

The 24 Petits Preludes in all of the major and minor keys are less ambitious technically and more conservative, even academic in style. The purity of the contrapuntal writing in slower pieces like Preludes Nos. 10 and 20 smacks of organ technique, while No. 22’s imitative writing suggests a Passepied from a Bach suite in slightly updated modern dress. The pieces fuse charm and seriousness in equal portions, and say what they need to say without overstaying their welcome.

The music’s workmanship mirrors Ivan Ilić’s caringly detailed interpretations. For example, he shapes No. 18’s cascading patterns into cogent melodic arcs, while imparting subtle shadings of timbre to No. 11’s unassumingly beautiful chords. He scales Op. 69 No. 13’s dynamics with care, ensuring that the motoric build-ups do not get too loud too soon, and thereby generating steady momentum. Tempo choices similarly appear to be judicious.

While one might prefer Diane Andersen’s gaunter and more scintillating reading of Papillons noirs (Op. 69 No. 11) in her complete Jongen piano music cycle for the Pavane label, Ilić’s deliberation better allows you to absorb the harmonic motion, together with extra breathing room for the dancing right-hand triplets. In short, Ilić’s mindful virtuosity serves the music first and foremost throughout this highly recommendable and well-engineered release.

-- ClassicsToday.com

The Symphony in C was conceived in Paris in the late 1930s, but completed in America in 1940, and is dedicated to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premièred in 1946, the Symphony in Three Movements presents us with movements that also manifest different ways of moving: a march, a slow dance, and a march-jog-race. The Greeting Prelude was written as an eightieth birthday tribute to Pierre Monteux, conductor of the premières of Pétrouchka and The Rite of Spring, and was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the very day: 4 April 1955. The other two pieces on the album reflect Stravinsky’s lifelong involvement with ballet. The Divertimento is an orchestral piece extracted by Stravinsky from his ballet The Fairy’s Kiss. The ballet was a homage to Tchaikovsky, based on songs and piano pieces by him, stitched together and orchestrated with Stravinskian cool. The Circus Polka was a commission from Stravinsky’s long-time collaborator George Balanchine, who had been asked by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to create a dance for elephants. The version heard here is the composer’s own orchestral version; the original was scored for circus band and organ by David Raksin, and performed by fifty elephants and fifty female dancers!

REVIEW:

It’s easy to underestimate the depth and breadth of Andrew Davis’s repertoire and indeed his sterling qualities as a conductor – his ebullience, robust sense of rhythm and razor-sharp ears. All of which are much in evidence in this generous compendium of Stravinsky.

-- Gramophone