Classical Music

Original score composed by John Williams.
Producers include: John Williams.
Principally recorded at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage, Culver City, California. Includes liner notes by Alan Parker.
ANGELA'S ASHES was nominated for the 1999 Academy Awards For Best Original Score.
"Theme From Angela's Ashes" won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition.

SOMM Recordings' historic, enthusiastically reviewed survey of Sir Hubert Parry's 12 Sets of English Lyrics reaches it's end with a third revelatory volume. Volume III features pianist Andrew West and baritone Roderick Williams (both heard on Volumes I and II) and the return of soprano Sarah Fox (who appeared on Volume II). Composed between 1874 and shortly before Parry's death in 1918, the English Lyrics come from a time of immense change as old certainties gave way to new complexity and a global war that would utterly change Britain's standing in the world. Parry's riposte was the English Lyrics: a defiant assertion that English poetry was the equal of Germany's Lied and French m�lodies and arguably created the template for the development of the emerging English art-song. The texts of many of the 25 songs - including some of his finest - on this recording carry deeply personal meanings for Parry, his response to them as varied as mood dictates and all realized with consummate insight and craftsmanship. Settings of AP Graves, Julia Chatterton and Julian Sturgis are to the fore, although lyrics by Herbert Warner and the American poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Langdon Elwyn Mitchell are also to be heard in a spell- binding conclusion to an acclaimed series. Parry's only setting of Christina Rossetti, 'My heart is like a singing bird,' is delightfully effusive, 'When the Sun's Great Orb,' Wagner-like in it's imagining of the end of days, 'The child and the twilight' vividly full of night-time fears. Reviewing Volume I, BBC Music Magazine praised the "many pleasurable moments in this richly enjoyable album" with Classical Ear summing it up as being "In a word: blissful". Of Volume II, Robert Hugill applauded "this enterprising and illuminating survey", while MusicWeb International said: "Lovers of English songs, and Parry in particular, should be in their element with this satisfying album on Somm".

STRAUSS, R.: Daphne

From a stunning single line of chant to the explosive polyphony of William Byrd and J.S. Bach, each of the works on this recording is in some way related to light’s presence in our life journey: from birth to death, through love, disappointment, forgiveness, and transcendence. The presented repertoire spans the mystical 12th-century chant of Hildegard von Bingen through the Renaissance and Baroque eras, plus two special 19th century works by composers who were deeply inspired by the ideas and musical styles of these earlier time periods. Westminster Kantorei has been honored as a national finalist for The American Prize, whose judges praised the ensemble’s “finely-measured and delicate balance of voices, and a mastery of stylistic performance practice.” It has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival, the American Handel Festival and the Reformation 500 Anniversary Concert as well as in England and France, where it performed at the Festival Musique en L’ile in Paris. The ensemble has also collaborated with the Westminster Choir to perform Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Kurt Masur.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

REVIEWS:

“Although seventy-five years old, these mono recordings have been digitally remastered to reveal a thrilling performance of this great dramatic work.” – John Pitt, New Classics

“Full marks... Baillie is superb... Parry Jones makes a real impression. Williams is a magnificent colossus of an Elijah. I’d recommend this retrieval with pleasure.” – Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb

“First rate standards of production and repertoire... Astoundingly good quality.” – David Patmore, Classic Record Collector

“Williams is a magnificent prophet... Histrionically exciting and technically accomplished. Baillie is as always fresh-toned with pinpoint attack. The well trained choir is vital and dramatic, as is Robinson’s conducting. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to hear this set.” – John T. Hughes, International Record Review

Christopher Nupen presents a film about the man who made himself the most talked about, the most controversial, the most famous, and the most successful classical solists that the world of music has ever known - Niccolo Paganini.

"This music has the power to connect the avant-garde with the lost paradise of tonality,’ said Robin Holloway once about Britten. He might have been talking about this Blake set, a standout in Britten’s still often underrated output of the 1960s, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau after his contribution to the War Requiem.

Putting this new Roderick Williams recording immediately up against the composer and Fischer-Dieskau is like going from hymns ancient to hymns modern. Williams finds an ideal emotional stance—involved, totally word-conscious but never melodramatic…as a recorded recital, Williams—and Burnside, who is similarly colourful but keeps an interpretative distance from pumping up the text—have created an outstanding achievement, one to set alongside the Gerald Finley/Julius Drake disc. Their remaining items, including Tit for Tat—Britten’s ‘reissue’ of early 1929-31 Walter de la Mare settings—shine in a similar way. The Potton Hall recording is clean and clear with excellent instrument/voice balance."

-- Mike Ashman, Gramophone [6/2012]

This disc couples a masterpiece from Britten’s maturity and songs written in his youth. The latter were revived and gathered together as a set in his later years. Britten wrote very little for baritone, but I do think it a pity that rather than seek an interesting work by another composer to complement these two works, it was decided to complete the disc with folk-songs. Beautiful though these arrangements are, many collectors will have quite enough Oliver Cromwells and Little Sir Williams on the shelves, thank you. They are, however, beautifully sung here. There is a very brisk Plough Boy, and Roderick Williams tones in his voice beautifully for the gentler numbers. Ca’ the yowes, a minor masterpiece, is magnificently grand. Overall, the delivery is simple, neither folk-song nor art-song, and refreshingly avoiding the coy or arch in the likes of The foggy, foggy dew. No, Williams presents them unadorned, and with a beautiful legato line, as a series of lovely tunes with inventive and striking accompaniments. Others, some of whom set them up as quasi-operatic scenes, do inject more life into some of the songs, not always to their advantage.
 
Tit for Tat, a set of five short songs to poems by Walter de la Mare, was first performed in 1969 by John Shirley-Quirk with the composer at the piano. I have in my head the sound of Shirley-Quirk singing these songs, but can’t for the life of me remember where or when it comes from. The songs were written when Britten was in his teens, and he had only recently gathered them together and, with minimal editing, prepared them for publication. They are accomplished works that can, on the whole, be enjoyed without making allowances for the composer’s age. There is not the psychological insight - neither into the poems nor into the mind of the listener - that you find in the mature composer’s vocal music. Nor is the piano part so developed. Listen however to the second song, “Autumn”: everything that was to come is there in embryonic form. It would be easy to exaggerate the claims of these songs, but presented so cleanly and with such understanding as do Williams and his superb pianist, Iain Burnside, they make just the effect the mature composer surely intended.
 
Philip Lancaster’s booklet essay casts plenty of light on the programme. Walter de la Mare’s poems are sadly not given, but the folk-song texts do appear, as do the texts of the masterly Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. This work was composed for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and is dedicated to him. The dedication reads “For Dieter: the past and the future. It is a proper, integrated song-cycle, but which is sung without a break. Poems and proverbs alternate, creating a continuous text which was chosen and arranged in order by Peter Pears, no doubt with input from the composer. Words and music combine to create a cycle that maintains a single mood throughout its length, one of melancholy observation. In his book Britten, Voice and Piano, Stephen Johnson recounts how the relationship between Fischer-Dieskau and Britten, though nourished by mutual admiration, was not an easy one. The sessions for their Decca recording of December 1965 were by all accounts particularly fraught, but this is hardly audible in the finished result, which is a performance of extraordinary mastery. Fischer-Dieskau is magnificent, and the composer’s piano playing is miraculous. Listen, for example, in the ppp quavers that introduce A Poison Tree, how he manages to conceal the inconvenient fact that a piano works by hammers striking on keys. This is the kind of piano playing that prompted Gerald Moore, in his book Am I Too Loud?, to proclaim Britten as “the world’s greatest living accompanist”. Britten’s recorded legacy is essential for any admirer of his work, but happily the era is now long gone when attempts by other performers to stamp their own personality on the music seemed like an affront to the composer’s memory. Iain Burnside is outstandingly fine on this disc. It seems almost insulting to state that his playing is technically impeccable, but I do state it, whilst adding that he is profoundly in tune with the music and with the singer’s needs. Roderick Williams gives a performance of great vision, beautifully sung, that will satisfy any listener who discovers the work from this performance. In general, Fischer-Dieskau employs a wider range of vocal colour that allows him, in The ChimneySweeper, for example, to play the part of the oppressed child with remarkable vividness. Another example would be at the line “And blights with plagues the marriage hearse” in London, where Williams doesn’t really match Fischer-Dieskau’s disillusioned bitterness. Williams is slower, too, the song hardly reflecting the composer’s marking of “Very agitated”. If this gives the impression that the reading is a pale one, the opposite is the case. There is a suggestion of whimsy in Fischer-Dieskau’s performance of The Fly that is absent in Williams’ reading, and Williams launches Ah! Sun-flower with a superb crescendo barely observed by Fischer-Dieskau. The end of the work, too, is very fine indeed from both artists, not quite resigned, not quite hopeless.
 
-- William Hedley , MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Howard Skempton was born in Chester in 1947 and has worked as a composer, accordionist and music publisher. He studied in London with Cornelius Cardew which helped him to discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has continued to write undeflected by compositional trends, producing a corpus of more than 300 works- many pieces being miniatures for solo piano or accordion. Skempton calls these pieces ‘the central nervous system’ of his work. His catalogue of works is as diverse as it is long, ranging from pieces for solo cello and guitar to the Chamber Concerto for fifteen players, the Concerto for Hurdy-Gurdy and Percussion, and Lento, premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1991. His works are performed on this new release by Ensemble 360 alongside pianist Tim Horton, and vocalists Roderick Williams and James Gilchrist.

As a music laboratory of great influence in the southern states of America, New Orleans was instrumental in the development of American popular music, and soul in particular. Fantastic New Orleans artists and producers mixed religious and secular music, Indian and Caribbean sounds, voodoo, Jazz and Zydeco… Their soul music was born out of the fusion between those influences and the language and emotions of Gospel, creating a universal idiom that stood the world on its head. In the 32 page booklet accompanying this essential anthology, Bruno Blum provides a commentary of the metamorphosis of Negro spirituals, blues and rock into pure New Orleans soul, thanks to such legendary artists as Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas, Snooks Eaglin or Eddie Bo. Patrick FReMEAUX

The album originally entitled 'Liverpool Pops at Home' grew out of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's desire to put on a concert called Sounds of the City, a concert to show the richness of the musical legacy from the great musicians and composers of Liverpool.

A stroll along the Seine – Notre Dame reflected in the waters below – the Eiffel Tower illuminated in evening skies – bistro conversations echoing in the streets of the Left Bank. + Parisian scenes such as these come to mind when listening to the nuances of pianist Kathryn Goodson’s debut Navona Records release, Belle Nuit, a collection of works from La Belle Époque and beyond, with arrangements for piano and wind instruments. + Ms. Goodson & friends express the imagery of love, loss, and passion through works by Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Franck, Messiaen and more.

Larry Williams was a blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll singer from New Orleans, who was a contemporary and close associate of Little Richard and Lloyd Price, and who registered a series of influential landmark rock 'n' roll hits during the late '50s with "Short Fat Fannie", "Bony Moronie" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzie". He worked as a chauffeur for Lloyd price for a while, as well as playing in the his band and those of Roy Brown and Percy Mayfield, and through his connections with Price and Little Richard got a deal with the Specialty label. When Little Richard quit rock 'n' roll to take up the ministry, producer Robert Blackwell groomed Williams to step into his shoes, and in 1959 he scored Top 10 R&B and pop hits with "Short Fat Fannie" and Bony Moronie". He could not maintain the flow of hits, but recorded many classics which were later recorded by major artists, with The Beatles reviving "Dizzy Miss Lizzie", "Slow Down" and "Bad Boy" and The Rolling Stones recording "She Said Yeah", while "Bony Moronie" became a staple of rock 'n' roll bands the world over. This 32-track CD comprises every track he released, naturally including all those well-known titles, during this first and most important period of his career up until the time that he was incarcerated for drug offences at the start of the '60s, and as such it is a definitive cross-section of his work and an entertaining slice of classic rock 'n' roll.

Charles Wuorinen has always been comfortable in a range of genres, embracing the traditional forms of opera, symphony, or string quartet as readily as he accepts the challenge unusual combinations that have become a second norm since Pierrot Lunaire more than a century ago. Nor has any particular focus dominated any period of his nearly sixty-year career: his eight symphonies span more than fifty years, his piano concertos forty. He has written everything from piano bagatelles to ballets, a Mass setting, eight symphonies, and three operas. This album features the latest and most traditionally structured of Wuorinen’s four piano sonatas—“sonata” being a term the composer has used on a number of occasions otherwise—as well as two vocal works setting poetry of two of our greatest modernist poets, John Ashbery and James Tate.

Roderick Williams writes: “Although only twelve years separate the composition of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and Schubert’s Schwanengesang, the ethos and sound world of the two works are markedly different. Pairing them on the concert platform seemed an obvious choice on one hand, but I was reminded not to try to perform Beethoven in the way I perform Schubert. For one thing, the former still has the ring of the late classical, while the latter explores the darkness of the early romantic. For this reason, we decided to record the two works in slightly different soundscapes. In An die ferne Geliebte, the inventiveness of Beethoven is best expressed in the piano writing, while the vocal part is deliberately simple, strophic (the music is repeated for each stanza), and folk-like. ...the sixth song states that these songs are offered ‘ohne Kunstgepräng’. And so we have set the voice slightly more distantly in the balance, giving the piano due prominence; the effect is almost as if I were singing over Iain’s shoulder. Schwanengesang is recorded more traditionally: in these most extraordinary and progressive songs the vocal line is supported by the piano, in equal partnership. Roderick Williams.”

Besides the fact that they both celebrate Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, there is a close connection between the two works included on the eighth volume of Bach's secular cantatas. On October 2nd, 1734, the King and his family made a surprise visit to Leipzig, and in all haste a festive event was planned for three days later, in celebration of the anniversary of Augustus's ascension to the Polish throne. Bach was asked to provide the musical entertainment, and consequently had to put aside the work he was busy composing...namely BWV 206 ''Schleicht, spielende Wellen'', intended for a celebration of the King's birthday on October 7th! The new cantata, Preise dein Glucke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215, is a substantial work, and it is not surprising that Bach, with only a few days to produce it, had recourse to earlier compositions: the only parts that were written completely from scratch were the recitatives, the soprano aria and the final chorus.

In the meantime, BWV 206 - the birthday cantata that Bach had to put on hold - came to good use two years later, when the King's birthday was celebrated with a concert at Zimmermann's coffee house in Leipzig. Both works are richly scored with trumpets and timpani, and here receive suitably festive performances form Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki.

REVIEW:

Schleicht, spielende Wellen (‘Flow, playful waves and murmur’) follows the dramma per musica template of allegory – this time with four competing rivers yearning for the primacy of the monarch’s affections. However ludicrous, Bach constructs a very significant work which Suzuki treats as an undertaking of serious critical engagement. After 22 years of intensive Bach recording, Suzuki and his forces just seem to get better.

– Gramophone

Composer Kenneth Fuchs and conductor JoAnn Falletta completed their fourth recording with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, August 30–September 1, 2013. The recording features baritone and Naxos artist Roderick Williams and is produced by Grammy Award-winner Tim Handley. The repertoire includes Falling Man (for baritone voice and orchestra); Movie House (seven poems by John Updike for baritone voice and chamber ensemble); and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (four poems by William Blake for baritone voice and chamber ensemble). Fuchs’ music continues to find its visual counterpart in the work of Abstract Expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler, whose art adorns the cover of this disc.

This selection is also available as a Super Audio CD (SACD).

SOMM Recordings announces an important new recording of two classic English song cycles by Sir Arthur Somervell – Maud and A Shropshire Lad – from the acclaimed partnership of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan. Hailed as “the English Schumann” for his mastery of song setting, song cycles in particular, Somervell’s music is marked by a distinctive blend of lyricism and harmony that makes itself indelibly felt in these two seminal works of the English song repertoire. His first cycle, Maud, setting 13 poems from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s dark monodrama, was first performed in 1899 at the height of a fashion for recitals of songs sung in English. An intense, impassioned portrayal of infatuation, it is marked by remarkably eloquent and revealing relationships between voice and text, and voice and piano. Composed in 1904, the 10 poems from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad portray a young man wistfully contemplating nature, life and love at the age of 20 before following him through a life full of incident, the horror of the First World War and growing self-awareness. It prompted from Somervell texturally rich and varied music shot through with an aching lyricism all the more powerful and potent for its folk song-like simplicity and directness. Completing the recital are the enchanting, ever-popular lullaby Shepherd’s Cradle Song and wistful tale of childhood sweethearts with texts by Edgar Allan Poe, A Kingdom by the Sea. British music authority Jeremy Dibble provides informative booklet notes and Roderick Williams a revealing take on Somervell’s music from a singer’s perspective.

Also available on Blu-ray

The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood spotlights Bernstein's wide-ranging talents as a composer, his many gifts as a great interpreter and champion of other composers, and his role as an inspirer of a new generation of musicians and music lovers across the country and around the globe. The gala concert features a kaleidoscopic array of artists and ensembles from the worlds of classical music, film, and Broadway. The entire first half of the program is dedicated to selections from such brilliant Bernstein works as Candide, West Side Story, Mass, and Serenade. Music from the classical canon very dear to Bernstein's heart-selections includes from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the finale of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony and music by Aaron Copland, plus a new work by John Williams.

Featuring the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, this new release includes compositions by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725). La Gloria di Primavera, the work featured on this album, has been called a “feast of vocal invention, supplemented by wondrous instrumental writing…” The performances on this album were recorded live in Berkeley, California, at First Congregational Church in October of 2015.