Mel (Melanie Helène) Bonis was born in Paris in 1858, and showed a prodigious talent for music from an early age, attending the Paris Conservatoire from the age of sixteen, studying alongside Debussy and Pierne under Cesar Franck. Her passionate relationship with the singer Amedee-Louis Hettich was frowned upon by her parents, who pressured her to marry edouard Domange, a twice-widowed industrialist with five children. Bonis threw herself into her role as wife and stepmother, until a reunion with Hettich in the 1890s reignited her serious interest in composition. She composed more than 300 works, including pieces for solo piano, chamber music, and over forty melodies for voice and piano. As Bonis was too modest for self-promotion, and a victim of gender-bias, her music fell into obscurity after the First World War, and she became bedridden from arthritis. She continued to compose until her death, in 1937. Her orchestral output dates from two decades, between 1891 and 1912, and is well represented on this album.
Hugo Alfvén was an accomplished writer and painter as well as musician and composer. Born in Stockholm in 1872, he studied first at Kungliga Musikhögskolan (the Royal College of Music) and then in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, and Brussels. Influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss, Alfvén's style is also permeated with the influence of Swedish folk music. Festspel (Festival Play) was commissioned to inaugurate the new art nouveau building for Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern (the Royal Dramatic Theatre) in Stockholm, in 1908, the work is suitably rousing and celebratory for such an occasion. Alfvén was asked in 1932 to write incidental music for a play by Ludvig Nordström, to commemorate the 300-year anniversary of the death of the protestant Swedish monarch at the battle of Lützen, at the end of the Thirty Years War, the suite that he subsequently extracted is a substantial work in it's own right. Cantus arcticus is perhaps Rautavaara's best-known work, and was commissioned by the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, to honour it's first formal doctoral graduation ceremony, in 1972, Rautavaara instead took his inspiration from the natural environment of the region, incorporating two-channel tape recordings of birdsong as part of the orchestral texture.
The four symphonies of Arvo Part were composed over a span of forty-five years, and bear little or no relationship with one another - four individual pieces that represent his output at separate parts of his creative journey. The First Symphony was composed in 1963, shortly after Part had graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory. It's two-movement structure looks to the baroque - Canons and a Prelude and Fugue - but the harmonic language is extremely advanced, giving off a distinct whiff of twelve-tone serialism. The Second Symphony, from 1966, in three movements, again employs a combination of serialism and textures hinting at Penderecki and the Polish school. Also in three movements, the Third Symphony (1971) reflects the time Part spent in the late 1960s studying chant and mediaeval music. Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles' came much later (in 2007 - 08) and now the style is directly inspired by sacred music. Part took as his models two great litanies of the Orthodox Church: the Canon of Repentance, and the Canon to the Holy Guardian Angel. Unusually scored for strings, harp, timpani, and percussion, this final work is also cast in three movements. With her elegant, expressive body language, natural stage presence, and infectious musicality, Eva Ollikainen is one of the leading conductors of our time. This former student of Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra since 2020.
Rumon Gamba directs the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the third instalment of his exploration of Overtures from the British Isles. As in the case of the previous volumes, the recorded repertoire is rarely played, and the album includes three world premiere recordings. All the works were composed in a period of eleven years, between 1938 and 1949, against the background of the horrific world events of that era. Presenting an eclectic mix of musical styles, the album, like it's predecessors, sheds light on some wonderful discoveries, passionately and enthusiastically performed by orchestra and conductor.
