The BBC Philharmonic and its Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena focus here on the orchestral works of Joaquín Turina, one of the two leading Spanish composers of the twentieth century, the other being Manuel de Falla. Turina was a prolific composer, who in his sixty-seven years wrote more than one hundred works, in which he explored a wide range of classical genres, from symphonic music, solo piano pieces, and vocal works to ballet scores and chamber music. Most of these show the influences of traditional Andalusian music – often conveying feelings of rapture and immense exaltation – while also owing a debt to a range of French composers. - Chandos

“I hope you will knuckle down to a good symphony,” wrote Samuel Barber in September 1944 to his fellow composer Aaron Copland: “We deserve it of you, and your career is all set for it.” It was a strange thing to say given that Copland had already composed a variety of symphonies, albeit admittedly all more experimental than Barber might have preferred. The fourth volume in the highly acclaimed Copland series from John Wilson and the BBC Philharmonic opens with the resoundingly successful Symphony No. 3 (1944-46). The optimistic spirit of this work resonated perfectly with the euphoria of post-war America, resulting in its becoming an emblem of US nationalism. This lesser-recorded original version comes complete with the twelve bars which Bernstein later suggested cutting from the fourth movement. Three commissions complement the symphony: ‘Letter from Home’ (1944) reflects the feelings of receiving a letter from a loved one. ‘Down a Country Lane’ (originally commissioned by Life magazine as a solo piano work) is here performed in its orchestral version (1964), reimagined for a series of concerts showcasing youth orchestras. ‘Connotations’ (1962), a twelve-note serial composition premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the inauguration of The Philharmonic Hall, complete this invigorating surround-sound album.

Grammy Award Nominee 2006 'Best Classical Contemporary Composition' Composed in 2005 as a specially commissioned ballet score fo New York City Ballet, 'Piano Concerto No.2' comprises three movements: cumnock fair, shabards and shamnation. The work here receives its world premiere recording. It is a highly energetic work - a frenzy of folksong and dance; the first movement, cumnock fair, is a whirling fantasy of eighteenth-century Scottish dance melodies; shambards makes use of Burnsian folksong with fragments of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor drifting in and out of focus; shamnation is heavily influenced by Scottish folklore, often quite devilish. 'For sheer excitement...this half-romp, half tantrum of a work is hot stuff', wrote The Times. 'A Scotch Bestiary' was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Philharmonic to inaugurate the new organ in the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. This is a conertante work for organ (an instrument rarely used by contemporary composers) and orchestra, in two parts, and follows in a tradition of musical portraiture to which Elgar, Saint-Saëns and Mussorgsky have made significant contributions.

York Bowen has a distinguished reputation as a composer and was considered to be one of Britain's finest pianists. In his day he was known as 'The English Rachmaninoff', and Saint-Saëns described him as 'the most remarkable of the young British composers'. The works of York Bowen tend to display a blend of romanticism and strong individuality, and although his influences include the likes of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky, his music is also strongly defined by textures and harmonies that are uniquely 'Bowen'. This recording presents the only two surviving symphonies by Bowen: Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 2, which are performed here by the BBC Philharmonic under the exclusive Chandos artist Sir Andrew Davis. Symphony No. 1 was written in 1902 when Bowen was an eighteen-year-old composition student at the Royal Academy of Music. The work is laid out in only three movements (unusual for the time), and requires a relatively modest orchestra. It is a deeply impressive achievement - the beauty and lyricism of the second movement and its myriad of orchestral colourations, together with a unique and often surprising sense of well-being in the finale, demonstrate that here is a genuinely symphonic composer who was not content just to copy established models and appease his professors. At least one movement of this symphony was performed during Bowen's time at the academy, but this recording may well be the first time that the work has been performed in its entirety. When Bowen composed his Symphony No. 2 just seven years after completing his first, much had happened in the world of modern music, not least in instrumental terms with the acceptance of large orchestras as standard. As a result this work is much larger in scale than his first symphony, and performed with significantly larger instrumental forces too. The finale in particular is spectacular in the way it develops from the tiniest semi-tonal seed into a fiery and almost unstoppable flood of 'Bowen-esque' inventiveness. This symphony is the work of an assured composer who was completely certain in his music's sense of direction and in the positive and life-affirming nature of his compositions.

This new release, the fourth volume of the Alwyn film music series, has been long anticipated. This series began seventeen years ago with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Richard Hickox, and continued with Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, who released volumes 2 and 3 in 2001 and 2005. Rumon Gamba also got involved in other series, exploring the music of d’Indy, Rozsa, and British composers of the twentieth century, as in two volumes of Overtures from the British Isles. This latest album brings new recordings of music from the prolific decades of the 40s and 50s, during which Alwyn scored a number of famous films. These scores show to perfection Alwyn’s supreme skill in providing music totally attuned to the subject matter, which ranges from the dramatic to the exotic, from comedy to the factual. Much of the music recorded here had to be reconstructed by Philip Lane from the soundtracks, as written scores had not survived.

In his final year as BBC Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena completes a highly-acclaimed Ginastera series with this third volume. Like in his previous series ‘La Musica de Espana,’ Mena brings the composer’s creative genius to a more deserved fame, showcasing here three works that belonged to three different periods of his compositional life. While the Concierto Argentino is the most significant score of his early years, drawing directly on Argentinian folk music and full of youthful exuberance, the Variaciones Concertantes (more a concerto for orchestra than a set of variations) assumes a more personal and abstract form in accordance with the development of his harmonic ideas in the later stage of his life. The rhythmic energy and magic scoring of the ‘neo-expressionist’ piano concerto (as Ginastera defined the third phase of his life) is faithfully expressed by the highly technical and virtuosic playing of Xiayin Wang, widely praised for her recent solo recording of piano works by Enrique Granados.

This is the second recording from the BBC Philharmonic under its brilliant new Principal Conductor, Gianandrea Noseda. The disc features some of Respighi's most popular music, the glittering ballet 'La Boutique fantasque', alongside the rare and intriguing 'Prelude and fugue in D major' and 'La pentola magica'. Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 2, 5 & 6 October 2002 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Denise Else (Assistant)

As a pianist, Dohnányi was legendary. As a composer, however, he was for many years dismissed as little more than a musical adjunct of Brahms. Certainly his music is more conservative than that of his contemporaries, but it is hard to see how anyone could fail to be engaged by its humour and passion. Wtih music this rich in detail you need a top-flight orchestra to bring out all the nuances and subtlety in the orchestration. Matthias Bamert and the BBC Philharmonic have already proved themselves worthy Dohnányi advocates. The irrepressible Howard Shelley is the pianist in the virtuosic piano concerto. Clifford Lantaff is the BBC Philharmonic's own renowned harpist and the young James Ehnes, who performed with such élan on Chandos' recent Hummel disc, is the soloist in the violin concerto.

This first ever digital recording of Prokofiev's music for the ballet 'The Stone Flower' is released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. the story is an amalgamation of several of the folk-style tales in a book by the ural writer Paval Bazhov, cast in a Prologue, four acts and eight scenes which range from village and fairground to mountain caverns. 'The Tale of the Stone Flower' is Prokofiev's last ballet, and he never lived to see it performed. This is Chandos' first recording with Gianandrea Noseda, the new Principal Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. His work with the orchestra has been greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 21, 22, 24 & 28 January 2003 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Mike George (Recording) Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Denise Else (Assistant) Nick Bell (Assistant)

These are intense and memorable performances with an outstanding, exciting and colourful ‘Sinfonia espansiva’ and a ferociously energetic, yet life-affirming ‘Inextinguishable’ Symphony No. 4. All in all, a distinguished, top drawer set.

-- MusicWeb International

From the Bolshoi to La Scala, from the Stockholm Philharmonic to the Vienna Symphony, the forty-five-year carrier and notably famous supple stick technique of Gennady Rozhdestvensky have made him one of hte most respected twentieth-century conductors in Europe. This release celebrates his superb Enescu series with the BBC Philharmonic. The Romanian composer was one of the most prodigiously gifted musicians of the twentieth century: a great violinist and composer, a distinguished conductor, an accomplished pianist, able cellist, and a famous violin teacher. Although relatively modest, his published output contained some substantial works, such as the folk-inspired Romanian Rhapsodies and romantically influenced symphonies, all featured here.

The Russian composer, conductor and pianist Arensky was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov at St Petersburg Concervatory and later taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where his pupils included Rachmaninov and Scriabin. His music is an ecclectic blend of Russian idiom and late romantic tradition. Vassily Sinaisky is a master of this repertoire and has made a string of recordings of Russian music with the BBC Philharmonic, all of which have received tremendous critical acclaim. Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 9-11 April 2002 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Mike George (Recording) Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker

The first Rachmaninoff recording by Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic; 'Francesca da Rimini', received the accolade of 'Classical CD of the Week' from The Daily Telegraph and elicited the comment, 'Noseda sculpts the brooding passions of Rachmaninoff's dramatic score with trhilling intensity', from The Times. They return with three highly charged orchestral works. Noseda writees of his journey with Symphony No.1: 'Having conducted several times the Rachmaninoff second and third symphonies, I've been wondering continuously why the first of his symphonies has been neglected or considered not as good as its later sisters. In the last couple of years the level of my curiousity has increased so much that I've taken seriously the task of studying, learning and finally performing Rachmaninoff's first symphony. The result astonished me greatly: the symphony has such a beauty in the melodic line, the harmony is so refined, the structure is well controlled and yet everything seems naturally fluent.' Regarded as one of the most remarkable composers of the twentieth century, Serge Rachmaninoff wrote three romanticalldy inclined symphonies, two of which are now standard orchestral repertoire. However, the premiere of Symphony No.1 was such a disaster that Rachmaninoff refrained from composing anything more for the next three years. The conductor, Glazunov, is reputed to have been drunk, and Rachmaninoff was unable to attend the entire performance. He reacted by tearing up the score. Thankfully for posterity, the instrumental parts were preserved and rediscoverd in 1945, permitting the work to be restored. It is a work full of youthful fervour, distinctive and sweeping themes, and nationalist sentiments, and is now widely regarded as a vivid example of his early talent. It is complemented here by the 'Youth Symphony', the first movement of a projected but never completed symphony in D minor, composed when Rachmaninoff was only seventeen, and the great symphonic poem 'The Isle of the Dead', inspired by Arnold Böcklin's painting of the same name which Rachmaninoff had seen on display in Paris in 1907. Composed in 1909, it is still a relatively early work, but contains some of the dark Russian spiritual qualities which Rachmaninoff was to develop further in his later compositions. Gianandrea Noseda has a particular affinity for Russian music, which perhaps grew from his time with Gergiev at the Kirov. It is clear from his conducting that Rachmaninoff's music is deeply personal to him. Orchestra and conductor will perform this work at the BBC Proims in summer 2008 and at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall in November. Gianandrea Noseda will also conduct Rachmaninoff with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in June.

The exploration by John Wilson of Copland’s major orchestral output with the BBC Philharmonic has now reached Volume 3, with this invigorating programme recorded in surround-sound. It opens with An Outdoor Overture, a cheerful and breezy piece which Copland composed in 1938, intending to spearhead an initiative encouraging ‘American Music for American Youth’. Originally written for organ and orchestra, the First Symphony is presented here in its revised version (1926-28) for large orchestra. The six concise movements of Statements (1932-35) introduce a new style, their gritty soundscapes being stunning examples of what Copland later would refer to as ‘hard-bitten’ pieces. The concluding work is the expressive, fantastical Dance Symphony (1929) which explores different styles of symphonic movements, its dark aura a residue of its origin as a ballet on a grotesque vampire theme, composed 1922-25 and named Grohg. The symphony has remained a highly controversial piece ever since.