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)

'This is a superb disc. There have been distinguished collections of Smetana's symphonic poems but none quite to compare with this in excitement, richness of detail, sonic spectacle - how well Smetana writes for the brass! Not to be missed,' Gramophone on Volume One. Volume one of this series was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone and here Gianandrea Noseda conducts his second instalment in his Smetana Orchestral Works series. This latest programme is made up of the familiar Bartered Bride Overture and Dances with the overtures and ballets of his lesser-known operas, including his first opera The Brandenburgers - performed with the Ballet from Act I, The Kiss - which was his first collaboration with the brilliant young librettist and poet, Eliska Krasnohorska, and The Devil's Wall all of which offer Smetana's masterful orchestration, panache and virtuosity. They are performed with assurance by the BBC Philharmonic. Also available: CHAN 10413 Smetana: Orchestral Works, Volume One.

This is the second of three volumes of Brahms's choral works, performed by the Danish National Choir/DR with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under its distinguished Principal Conductor, Gerd Albrecht. Some of the works on this CD, especially the 'Ave Maria' and 'Triumphlied', are comparatively rarely heard, making this disc an important addition to the catalogue. Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 8 & 9 November 2001 (Schicksalslied, Nänie) and 25-27 August 2003 (Triumphlied, Ave Maria) Producer(s) Chris Hazell Ivar Munk Sound Engineer(s) Jørn Jacobsen

Classical Music

Classical Music

Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 16 & 17 May 2002 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker

This release contains a rare recording of the revised version of the Second Piano Concerto as well as two of Kabelevsky's most famous works - the suite 'The Comedians' and the 'Colas Breugnon' Overture. Kathryn Stott enjoys a versatile career as soloist, chamber musican and recording artist and has played with many of the world's leading orchestras and instrumentalists. She has a growing catalogue on Chandos and her work is consistently well received. Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 21, 24 & 25 June 2002 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Ralph Couzens Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Sharon Hughes (Assistant)

CHADWICK: Melpomene / Rip van Winkle / Symphonic Sketches /

Now that Chandos, in its extensive and irreplaceable film music series, has dealt with composers from Vaughan Williams to Nino Rota who first made their reputations in the classical concert field, with Ron Goodwin (1925–2003), they pay tribute to a musician who, in the early 1950s, quickly emerged from the pop music world with such fetching instrumental novelties as Swingin’ Sweethearts (known as Lingering Lovers in England) and similar cute numbers that became briefly ubiquitous on both sides of the Atlantic. (Incidentally Chandos should have provided some background commentary on Goodwin’s evolution in the accompanying booklet.)

This program offers a wide-ranging cross section of Goodwin’s work on several successful films as well as a few obscure but very appealing themes from minor films. Opening with the main theme to a 1963 war adventure—633 Squadron—we recognize Goodwin’s knack for taking very simple motifs of a generically fanfare-like or tocsin-like nature—sometimes celebratory, at others minatory—and turning them into striking variants that stick firmly in the memory. The main theme from the top-drawer World War II thriller—Where Eagles Dare—is another excellent example of this exceptional skill of creating an imposing charge of tension and foreboding through a monothematic manipulation of a basic percussion-lanced idea. Operation Crossbow and Force Ten from Navarone also fall into this category.

But Goodwin had another puckish side to his chameleon-like personality: an ability to throw together a mélange of thematic snippets drawn from all kinds of easily recognizable and pigeonholed ethnic and nationalistic sources—as in the rollicking roundelays from Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Monte Carlo or Bust. The Miss Marple theme exemplifies Goodwin’s ability to establish and enhance a uniquely quirky character in just a few measures similar to the late John Addison’s inimitable theme for Murder She Wrote. Some of Goodwin’s themes have such unusual appeal that they can be adapted to other collective uses, as in the case of the main theme from The Trap, a lesser film noir, which later became known as “The London Marathon Theme.” Goodwin’s facility with more lyrically romantic material is evident in Lancelot and Guinevere, Of Human Bondage, and Beauty and the Beast, while a suite from Clash of Loyalties exploits more-exotic terrain quite colorfully.

Finally, we have here for the first time anywhere some lovely and sensually expressive melodies, such as the main themes from Deadly Stranger, Whirlpool, and Submarine X-1. About the only examples here that come across as somewhat derivatively generic are the London Theme from Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the suite from Battle of Britain, for which the too-slow-writing William Walton was preparing a truly exciting score but was replaced at the last minute by the more facile Goodwin.

This inherently positive, cheerful, and good-humored music reflects the beloved Goodwin’s own personality and is given a rousing and thrilling send-off by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic. A real treat for all lovers of “light.”

Paul A. Snook, FANFARE

March's Disc of the Month sees Howard Shelley, recently awarded an OBE for his services to music, conduct the Orchestra of Opera North from the piano. In this his latest recording for Chandos Shelley turns his attention to three popular concertos in the piano repertoire: Robert Schumann's only completed piano concerto, Grieg's single piano concerto and Saint- Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor. These authoritative performances shed new light on three wellloved works, brought together on one disc for the first time. Shelley elucidates his revelatory approach to the works: 'Ever since I first fell in love with Schumann's Piano Concerto in my early teens, I have been intrigued and slightly puzzled by the tradition of slowing the fourth bar of the Allegro affettuoso first movement to what is effectively no more than an Andante, even though there is no indication of any tempo shift in the score. A metronome marking of 84 to the minim, taken from Schumann's manuscript, is given in almost all editions of this work, reducing only to 72 to the dotted minim for the central Andante espressivo section. These are extraordinarily fast basic tempos. There are similar issues in the second movement - a surprisingly fast metronome mark, suggesting perhaps a lighter lyricism than we are sometimes used to, especially in the big cello melody - and also in the first movement of Saint-Saëns's Second Concerto, which is often taken at about half its marked speed. As for Grieg's Concerto, we are fortunate to have Percy Grainger's very informative and detailed notes on the piece, as he discussed it with the composer. Elsewhere he points out that Grieg's tempos were generally faster than when others played the piece. These are some of the considerations which have led to the interpretations on this recording. Directing a highly responsive orchestra from the keyboard has also allowed me great freedom in realising my ideas.'

Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 30 & 31 October 2001 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Ralph Couzens Mike George

Chandos presents the original Borodin Quartet's legendary recording of Shostakovich's String Quartets 1-13 on CD for the first time. This important recording, which dates from the 1960s, has been digitally re-mastered to Chandos' usual, uncompromising standards. This four-CD set is available at a special price.

This is the latest album in the ongoing series of Spanish orchestral music with the BBC Philharmonic under Juanjo Mena, and Mena’s second featuring the works by Joaquín Turina, one of the leading Spanish composers of his generation.

The works recorded here are filled with the inspiration which Turina found in his native Andalusia and particularly the city of Seville. La procesión del Rocío, his first orchestral work, was inspired by memories of a procession held in the gypsy quarter of Seville and is filled with lively dance rhythms. Canto a Sevilla, a song cycle with orchestra, is a heartfelt tribute to Seville and its culture, taking on themes such as the vibrant Easter Procession, Seville’s beautiful ornamental fountains, and even a ghost that haunts the streets at night. Danzas gitanas, a collection of Andalusian gypsy dances, introduces a nocturnal atmosphere into a style normally characterized by bright orchestral colours and extravagant rhythmic intricacies. The Rapsodia sinfónica, one of his last works, represents a more mature, reflective composer. The use of piano and string orchestra limits the available palette of colours, Turina instead deciding to focus on the intimate relationship between the ensemble and soloist, a role here filled by Martin Roscoe.

These thoroughly sympathetic performances are well played, energetic, and colourful; they benefit from Chandos’s lush recorded sound.

- Fanfare

María Espada adds a luminous glow to this homage to Seville in all its mystery and magic, exuberance and eerie phantasms.

- Gramophone

Enescu’s First Piano Quartet (1909) shows his profound stylistic debt to Fauré; the Second (1944), one of his last works, is dedicated to the French master’s memory. But both works are essentially Enescian in their ceaseless exploration of basic thematic shapes and atmospheric evocations of his Romanian homeland. Neither sounds anything like the early Romanian Rhapsodies, whose ubiquitous success Enescu came to hate.

Time stands still in these extraordinary works. The rapturous nocturne that is the First Quartet’s slow movement is one of his most exquisite inspirations, while the first two movements of the Second Quartet seem miraculously independent of any barline, with phrases and lines of wonderful plasticity drifting in and out as if on the drawing and exhalation of the players’ breathing. In his notes, Martin Anderson asserts: ‘Enescu is the greatest great composer whose greatness is not generally recognized.’ But it’s precisely the rarified and genuinely unusual nature of his inspiration that may have contributed to that state of affairs.

The Schubert Ensemble have clearly lived with this music for a long time – and love it. Subtlety, restraint, perfect unanimity within the ebb and flow of the inbuilt rubato – they have it all, plus the sudden blazes of energy required in both Quartets’ finales. The limpidity and crystalline touch of William Howard’s pianism impresses throughout. These works are magnificently performed here. An important release.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

Sir Andrew Davis is among the most distinguished interpreters of British music today and here turns to the works of Sir Arnold Bax. With the inclusion of the Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra, this album marks the completion of Chandos’s long project to record Bax’s complete orchestral music over time.

Born in 1883 into a wealthy family in London, Arnold Bax began a love affair with Ireland as a young man. He moved there in 1911 and his Four Orchestral Pieces from 1912 – 13 are deeply influenced by the landscape of the countryside near his Dublin home. The first three are better known in revised versions, from 1928, as Three Pieces for Small Orchestra. Here ‘The Dance of Wild Irravel’ joins the other three movements for the premiere recording of the four Pieces as Bax originally conceived and orchestrated them.

The Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra from 1920 was inspired by the strong feelings with which Bax responded to the Irish political turmoil at the time, underlined by his use of the Sinn Fein Marching Song (later the Irish national anthem) at its climax. Bax is celebrated for his melodic invention and this passionately lyrical score must be one of the finest examples of his gift. Here the soloist is Philip Dukes, described by The Times as ‘Great Britain’s most outstanding viola player’.

By 1927 Bax’s style was changing and the opening of the Overture, Elegy and Rondo is reminiscent of a classical concerto, suggesting a leaning towards then-fashionable neoclassicism. The long, dreamy melody of the middle section and brilliant, colourful orchestration, however, are unmistakable hallmarks of Bax’s individual voice. - Chandos

Reviews

“… Dukes is a sterling advocate of this unjustly neglected work [Phantasy] – the haunting cor anglais solo recalls the shepherd’s lament in Wagner’s Tristan – while Davis proves passionate in the impressionistic Four Orchestral Pieces and the powerful, dark Overture, Elegy and Rondo.” - Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times, Culture magazine, London – [September 14, 2014]

“All three of these rarely heard works come from the first half of Bax’s career as a composer. The earliest is the lightweight but charming set of Four orchestral Pieces from 1914, recorded here for the first time … The latest is the far more substantial Overture, Elegy and Rondo … Through stylistically the two works have their differences … both works reveal the same sure-footed handling of the orchestra, which these carefully manicured performances under conductor Andrew Davis show off beautifully…” - Andrew Clements, The Guardian, [August 29, 2014]