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.

5 out of 5 stars for Performance and Sound!

This disc was an award-winner when it first appeared in 1993, and rightly so. These are among Delius’s finest and most consistent works, and Hickox directs them with an authority and atmosphere that recalls Beecham or Barbirolli. Bryn Terfel, as soloist in Sea Drift, contributes one of the finest and most deeply-felt performances of his now extensive discography, and this is one of the most restrainedly expressive interpretations this outpouring of wild pathos has received on disc. Throughout the three works the choirs are ideally responsive to the beauty of the poetry, coming into their own in the late Songs of Farewell. If Songs of Sunset doesn’t quite efface the memory of Charles Groves’s 1968 account with Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk, this is still a splendid account of a subtle work that offers far more than mere fin-de-siècle languor. Altogether a notable release which it’s a pleasure to welcome back to currency.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine
Reviewing earlier release of this recording

Chandos’ new exclusive collaboration with the recent Salzburg and Leeds competition winner Federico Colli is kicking off with this first volume in a unique Scarlatti series. Playing on a modern Steinway, the Italian pianist – internationally recognized for his intelligent, imaginative interpretations and impeccable technique – here explores the keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti, taking a fresh approach from a philosophical angle, by grouping the compositions into ‘chapters’ in order to reflect the many contrasts of his life and his contradictory personality. In personal liner notes Colli reveals: "I conceived a map of a journey into transcendental thought, beyond the works’ phenomenological meaning. Each chapter has a title and the individual sonatas in each chapter refer back to the permeating image of its basic idea." This album is an exceptional start to what promises to be an exciting, long-lasting partnership.

From Spain to Mexico and Brazil, the RNCM Wind Orchestra, under the conductors Clark Rundell and Mark Heron, here celebrates the strong Latin tradition of wind bands in an exhilarating programme. The album prominently features works by one of the most iconic composers for winds, the Brazilian Villa-Lobos. Their liveliness, freely changing modalities, ease of flow, and likeable sonorities are a striking compositional signature, the unusual Concerto Grosso exploring a unique sound world with concertante discussion among the four wind soloists and the wind band. Also heard are the tender wind Adagio by Rodrigo and his arrangement for band of his first major symphonic work, Per la flor del lliri blau, which in dreamily evoking the age of mediaeval tales inspired his Concierto de Aranjuez. We are brought to Mexico with a stunning work by one of the country’s most popular composers, Carlos Chávez, celebrating a range of popular national genres: the march, waltz, and song.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries many British composers produced superb works for cello and piano, but few of these actually made their way into the general repertoire. Here we have works by four of thee distinct musical personalities. Exclusive Chandos artist cellist Paul Watkins, accompanied by Huw Watkins, performs Parry, Foulds, Delius and Bantock.

Marking their third collaboration, violinist Tasmin Little with conductor Sir Andrew Davis are acclaimed for their nuanced understanding of the concertos of Elgar and Moeran and here demonstrate the deep connection to British music with works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Haydn Wood, and Frederick Delius. With the BBC Philharmonic.

Review:

Besides the stellar quality of Little's playing (as ever, warmly engaging and technically bombproof), Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic provide accompaniments in a special class. The slow movements of Wood's Concerto opens with a long theme for the principal horn, delivered here with spellbinding loveliness.

– BBC Music Magazine

Known for his highly imaginative and philosophical approaches to his musical presentations, Federico Colli is back with a second album on Chandos. Having begun with Scarlatti sonatas, he now turns his hand to the great master J.S. Bach to explore the relationship between Bach’s music for keyboard and what Colli regards as its transcendent quality, its universal beauty. In a personal note for the booklet, Colli explains how he arrived at the extraordinary interpretations captured here. The relationship he explores is discoverable in the Italian Concerto and Partita No. 4, but it is in Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne that the relationship, in his view, becomes clear. Colli offers the listener a vivid interpretation which links the progress of the piece, rich in symbolic detail, to important stages in the life, and afterlife, of Christ, different re-iterations of the theme and of the tonalities corresponding with key moments in the religious narrative. As always, Colli gives deeply felt and exciting performances, his irrepressible personality and flair evident throughout.

REVIEW:

My enthusiasm for this disc is less about Colli’s philosophical ruminations upon the music, however heartfelt they may be, and more about his approach to playing it, which is both compelling and fresh; it combines abundant technical finesse with a visionary grasp of scale and structure, as well as the ability to project extremes of fragility and monumentality (most notably in the Chaconne), and above all to conjure a kaleidoscopic palette of colours and textures from his Steinway. This is an intelligently compiled programme, stunningly performed, in immaculate sound. Do not hesitate.

– Gramophone

Dating from his years of 'apprenticeship', these two works shaped Elgar's reputation as a leading orchestrator and most popular British composer of his time. The secular cantata Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf derives from Longfellow's epic poem about Olaf Tryggvason, who became King of Norway in 995. While the text was heavily adapted and augmented, the use of sophisticated compositional techniques, such as extensive motivic work, resulted in music of great power and solemnity. The ballad The Banner of Saint George is based on the story of Saint George of Cappadocia, as related by the Bristol poet Shapcott Wensley. It was commissioned by Britain's leading publisher, Novello, and composed in only one month in 1896. Elgar overcame the prescriptive nature of the words and produced a work of lasting charm, the music rising above the material to create atmosphere, momentum, and color.

Reviews:

What a nice idea it was to have a Norwegian choir and orchestra performing English music about a Norse hero. The combined Norwegian choirs sing very well indeed in both works, and the Bergen Philharmonic plays with verve and distinction. Sir Andrew Davis is just the man for these assignments.

– MusicWeb International

There's nothing stilted about Elgar's music: it crackles with confident vitality...the Norwegian choruses respond with crisp vigor and superb English diction, only faintly (and appropriately) Scandinavian-tinged. Davis's expansive conducting and the excellent Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra bring out Elgar's vivid orchestral textures.

– BBC Music Magazine

CDs of opera and oratorio arias and duets by Handel are hardly a rare event. Last year’s 250th anniversary of the composer’s death lead to something of a glut in the market. In this respect, Chandos - under its early music Chaconne label - has made a wise choice in waiting until this year to release this recording of dramatic duets. It enables us to sit back and assess it on its own terms rather than as yet another anniversary act of homage.

And this disc really is worth considering closely. Superbly recorded, it sounds alive, clear and acoustically rich. It also features a well balanced programme, mixing operatic with oratorio duets that cover the full range of emotional experiences endured by Handel’s characters – from painful separation to joyous reunion; and from loving harmony to malign scheming.

The playing from the English Concert under Harry Bicket is excellent. Their performance is a fully ‘authentic’ affair on original instruments, with the usual sections of the baroque orchestra augmented by organ, archlute and baroque guitar. The recording balance brings them more to the fore than is often the case in Handel recordings, and turns them from stage supporters, to fully fledged actors in each of the short scenarios. Take for example the painterly introduction to ‘To thee, thou glorious son of worth’ from Theodora (track 6), or the plaintive flutes that accompany ‘Vivo in te’ from Tamerlano (track 9).

And what of the two soloists – soprano Rosemary Joshua and mezzo Sarah Connolly? Both are experienced Handelians in the recording studio and, more importantly, on stage, and therefore bring an insight, vigour and commitment to each of their roles. Their voices are also sufficiently varied to enable the listener to differentiate between them: Joshua’s is bright and lithe; Connolly’s warm and supple. Occasionally their blend is a little indistinct – in ‘Notte cara!’ from Ottone, for example (track 5) – and Connolly’s characterisation of roles originally sung by male castrati could do with a little beefing up. But for sheer vocal beauty, there is very little to fault.

John-Pierre Joyce, MusicWeb International

"This is what happens when you give every bar of Handel’s music its own raison d’être and breathe every wisp of nuance into his flavourful duets and those prolonged “da capo” arias. This concert, delivered by the English Concert under Harry Bicket, offered two artists of great refinement: Connolly and the elegant soprano Rosemary Joshua. Actually, there was a third great artist here, too: Bicket led his ensemble with both dramatic concision and pungent expression."

-- The Times (London)

Deeply committed to world premiere performances and recordings of new music, the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra is under the direction of Clark Rundell, with guest conductor Mark Heron. Robert Russell Bennett is best known for his orchestrations for over three-hundred musicals between 1920 and 1975. His rich career left us a heritage of more than two-hundred original compositions, more than thirty of which were written for wind band.

Classical Music

Joachim Raff’s symphonies have a reputation as being diffuse, bloated, and just not terribly interesting. On the basis of some of his programmatic works in the form, perhaps this is true, at least some of the time, but his Second is a lively, compact, formally shapely and melodically rich work that does not deserve its neglect. Maybe the first movement, which is based on a triadic theme not terribly susceptible to development, lacks drama, but it certainly moves well, as does the entire symphony for that matter. The finale in particular maintains its momentum from start to finish, unlike so many other romantic symphonies. At only 33 minutes (in this performance), you can’t say that the piece outstays its welcome. Järvi typically does not see profundity where none exists, but leads the orchestra in a joyful romp through the piece that proves consistently entertaining.

The four Shakespeare preludes also prove to be lots of fun. All are relatively short but well-orchestrated and atmospheric. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet is the tamest–it’s only nine minutes long and it’s not Tchaikovsky, but Othello is punchy and tense (and even shorter); The Tempest opens with an effective storm and features music that challenges you to figure out who the characters are that Raff illustrates; and Macbeth, possibly the best of all, spends a lot of time focused on the witches and, seemingly, the final battle. It’s great to have this music recorded, and terrifying to realize that the symphony is Raff’s Op. 140 and the preludes his WoO 49-52. My but that man could churn it out, couldn’t he? Fine playing and excellent sonics round out a release that deserves your attention.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Kochel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: “Nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flat and D,” adding in another letter, two weeks later, “I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat.” Heard in this context, Bavouzet’s playing is all the more astonishing.

REVIEWS:

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has joined forces with Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata to record the complete Mozart piano concertos. This is the third volume in the series. Bavouzet has won awards for his recordings of Haydn, Debussy, Prokofiev and Grieg. This recording shows that he is also a born Mozartian.

The three works on this recording all date from 1784 when Mozart was newly married and beginning to forge a freelance career for himself. The Piano Concerto in D Major K451 uses trumpets with timpani and has a distinctive military character. Takács-Nagy’s tempo is spot on in the opening movement marked Allegro assai. He and the Manchester Camerata open the movement with vibrancy and dynamism, and bring an infectious enthusiasm to Mozart’s springy dotted rhythms. Bavouzet’s phrasing and passagework are a model of classical decorum, and he uses subtle rubato to superb effect. There is excellent interplay between piano and orchestra, with phrases passing seamlessly between the players. The music is beautifully characterised. The militaristic opening theme gives way to the camp, whimsical second subject. The Manchester Camerata’s woodwind section are enchanting at the start of the slow movement. Bavouzet brings charm and restraint to the movement before giving us a moment of heart-stopping poetry in the interlude before the return of the opening them. The finale has enormous fizz and sparkle. There is tight, spirited interplay between soloist and orchestra. Bavouzet brings enormous energy to the increasingly elaborate passagework. It is impossible not to be swept along with the joys of music-making.

This is an outstanding recording and is worthy to sit alongside the great Mozart concerto recordings such as those by Perahia and Uchida.

-- MusicWeb International

The acclaimed violinist Jennifer Pike returns to Chandos to explore her heritage through the repertoire of a group of composers fundamental to the history of Polish music for the violin. From Janiewicz in the late eighteenth century right through to Bacewicz in the middle of the twentieth, Poland produced a number of composer-violinists well known across Europe. All of them were talented musicians as well as composers, their compositions technically demanding. Jennifer Pike here plays music by Karlowicz, Szymanowski, Wieniawski, and Moszkowski with complete control and deep feeling, sympathetically accompanied by Petr Limonov, winner of the Nikolai Rubinstein International Piano Competition.

Classical Music

Making his debut on Chandos, Sakari Oramo, who with the BBC Symphony Orchestra this year has championed new and rarely performed works, presents in surround sound the extravagant musical world of Florent Schmitt. The recording follows two exceptional Barbican performances with the same forces, a ‘sensuous and exotic’ Antoine et Cleopatre, according to the Financial Times (2016), and the first performance for nearly a dozen years of Symphony No. 2 (2017). The Second Symphony, the last major work by Schmitt, has nothing valedictory about it: as lavish and rhythmically sophisticated as his earlier music, emphatically bounding in fast passages and supple in slow, it also encompasses all the different musical expressions and styles that he had used over almost eight decades of composing. On the other hand, it is far from being an ‘old man’s piece.’ ‘It is really exuberant- very, very inventive, and incredibly busy for everyone,’ as Sakari Oramo explained in a BBC Radio 3 interview. The symphony is paired with the two orchestral suites from Antoine et Cleopatre, music written for Shakespeare’s play, premiered in 1920 at the Paris Opera, and very rarely recorded since then.

Classical Music

For me the main attraction in this fascinating batch of discs is the magnificent Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution. It is here presented in its unbowdlerised version including Stalin's speeches towards the end. Kondrashin was forced to elide them in his first recording. However let's not confuse politics with musical worth troubling though the process of separating one from the other in a cantata of this type may be. The forces used are massive and they are used to huge effect. Loudness and awe are not of course enough. In fact this music has a dizzying concentration that is bound to impress and some poetry too.

The performance history of the piece is fascinating. Completed in 1937, it was buried by the denunciations of that era until 1966 when it was performed and then recorded -against the conductor's wishes - minus two crucial substantial episodes which set words by Stalin. This Chandos recording which is complete, faithful to the original schema as to instrumentation and has all sections as written was performed in this form for the first time anywhere outside Eastern Europe by Järvi at the RFH in 1992.

The choir is large and subdivided into two section - eight parts. There is a super-augmented orchestra with quadruple woodwind and eight horns alongside three augmentary instrumental groups: six accordions or bayans, a seventeen strong windband including six further trumpets to add to the four already in the orchestra and a percussion ensemble with alarm bells, cannon-shot, sirens (9:22 in Revolution tr. 6) and the kitchen sink. In the wild fervent rumpus that is Revolution the voice of Gennadi Rozhdestvensky rings out through a megaphone orating the words of Lenin. One can somehow see the smoke of insurrection, feel its sting, the howls of heightened awareness and hysteria and the bloody fervour of the words. This is the same movement in which the Bayan band appear. The bayans return for The Oath: Stalin's pledge in his speech at Lenin's bierside. It too burns with conviction - faithful to the original sentiments of the extension of the Communist International into a spreading worldwide alliance. It is greatly to the credit of the Philharmonia chorus and Simon Halsey that the flame burns bright, steady and intense. The final and tenth movement, The Constitution, again sets Stalin's words

There are no soloists except for Rozhdestvensky and his spoken cameo - the voice of the people speaking the words of their hortators into the dazzling sun. Overdose on grandiloquence and blazing fervour. In case you think this is all unremitting grandstanding the quietly intimate silvery sheen of the strings in Victory shines forth.

The notes are by Christopher Palmer and all the words are there in the booklet: transliterated Russian alongside French, German and English translations.

When this disc was first released in 1992 while not impossible to track down full recordings of Prokofiev's third Soviet ballet The Tale of the Stone Flower were difficult to come by. CPO and Chandos have put that right in style since. Even so there is a place for this twenty-five minute sequence from Prokofiev's full-length ballet: whooping brass, gypsy flavour, echoes of Romeo and Juliet (how could he escape it), dark clouded tension, shrieking tangy woodwind, the swayingly touching solo of the gypsy girl (tr.17) and stamping, crashing fury.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

The fact that these works have, until now, remained unrecorded perhaps bears witness to the fact that the discrimination confronted by Alice Mary Smith over a hundred years ago has still not been entirely eradicated. Smith wrote by far the greatest number of orchestral works of any ninteenth-century British woman composer and the success of her orchestral and choral works gave rise to a heated discussion as to whether a woman could ever compose a work of greatness. Her finely crafted and inventive music is the story of a wife and mother battling against prejudice and, in the eyes of her contemporaries at least, succeeding.

Richard Hickox conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the second volume of Leighton's orchestral works. BBC Music Magazine wrote of volume 1, "Hickox directs superbly paced and eloquent performances of this fine music." Volume 2 presents two large-scale orchestral works, Symphony No.2 'Sinfonia Mistica', which receives its first recording; coupled with Te Deum Laudamus in its orchestrated version. One of the most successful British composers of the latter half of the twentieth century, Kenneth Leighton's lifelong musical relationship with the human voice, exemplified in the two works of this recording, began as a chorister in the choir of Wakefield Cathedral as a young boy. It was to impact greatly on his writing. Over the course of his life he wrote almost continually for the voice, absorbing vocal lines in all settings. It provided an excellent vehicle for some of his most lyrical and expressive writing. Leighton wrote three numbered symphonies. Symphony No.2 was composed in 1974 as a direct response to the death of his month, and Leighton referred to the work as a 'meditation on the subject of death.' Composed over six movements and approaching an hour in length Sinfonia Mistica contains some of Leighton's most personal and reactionary music, being at various times angry and emotional, yet serene and thoughtful. While he describes the symphony as a 'requiem' the conventional texts for this service are not employed, instead he used texts by John Donne, George Herbert and Henry King, poets who have been a constant source of inspiration to British composers. The original setting of Te Deum was written for choir and organ, but two years after its completion, Leighton received a request from the Oxford Bach Choir for an orchestral version of the work, which was completed in 1966. Scored for chorus and full orchestra it is an imaginative setting of what is a liturgical text of praise, and written in honour of St Cecilia. This climatic work contains some of Leighton's most enduring and significant music. Chandos has received widespread appreciation for embarking on this revelatory new orchestral series. Volume 3 will be released in spring 2009. Also available: Volume 1: CHAN 10461

Released in July 1940, 'The Sea Hawk' was Korngold's last swashbuckler, and is arguably the finest film ever made in the genre. Certainly it is one of Errol Flynn's greatest films, and had a lavish budget for its time of 1.7m. One of the most difficult assignments of Korngold's career, it required a score of extraordinary length and complexity. The music was superbly multi-layered and thematically complex, literally sweeping the film along and matching its extraordinary visuals. Composition began just two days after the filming had been completed: in a special projection room equipped with a piano, Korngold had the reels of film run for him repeatedly while he improvised his music on the piano to the running footage. Later, he would then complete a full, annotated piano score. His training in the late symphonic traditions served him well. This recording has been very much a personal project for Rumon Gamba who comments, 'as with the rest of the Chandos Film series I very much wanted to keep the music limited to a single disc, instead of being dogged reconstruction of the complete score, including every single cue - some being just a quick trumpet figure or drum roll. I felt it was more important to represent the symphonic sweep of the score which is one of this film's greatest strengths'. Gamba has created a comprehensive 'suite' of six 'movements' that follows the action chronologically and only leaves out some insignificant cues and general repetitions. He continues, 'I believe that hearing Korngold's score in this manner will make for a wonderful listening experience representative of the narrative and in keeping with the spirit of this marvellous picture'. The BBC Philharmonic performs these scores with a symphonic precision and energy familiar with the first volume of Korngold's film music, released in 2005. Reviewing Volume 1, 'Music from the Movies' observed that 'Chandos has been doing great things in the film score re-recording world over recent years...With this release, however, they break new ground...this Chandos CD is for me the crowning achievement so far of what was already an impressive addition to the Golden Age film music'.

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.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Classical Music