Classical Music

Recorded in: St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, London 30 January-1 February 1989 Producer(s) Martin Compton Sound Engineer(s) Anthony Howell

Classical Music

Elite brass playing superbly recorded in 1977 and all at bargain price.

I have known this collection since buying its first version - an RCA LP: RL 25081. The collection’s LP origins are pretty obvious from the shortish playing time.

“Symphonic Brass Ensemble” signifies the traditional orchestral brass benches plus, in this case, timpani for Elgar’s lavish Hereford fanfare. While pandering to grand civic pride this fanfare manages to threads in some tragedy as well, Hereford did well with this commission. Bliss’s Fanfare for the Lord Mayor of London is splendid and perhaps pays passing tribute towards the end of its 1:31 to Janá?ek. It’s one of the most substantial of fanfares. Walton’s smashingly effervescent DNA imbues his Fanfare as arranged by Sargent. Havergal Brian’s Festival Fanfare is full of striking gestures, slashes and ascents. It’s alive with curmudgeonly character and in touch with the world of his enigmatic, angry and noble symphonies. Just as thrawn - and very much a symphonist - was Robert Simpson. While Simpson has had all his symphonies recorded by Hyperion Brian still awaits this accolade. It seems as far off as ever. Simpson was a granitic champion of Brian’s music and was responsible for the effort that resulted in the BBC studio-recording most of the 32 Brian symphonies for broadcast. His Canzona is the longest musical paragraph here. It’s also the most earnest and even the most beautiful in its evolutionary bloom. It dates from 1958 - the among the earliest years of Simpson’s long stay as a producer with the BBC. Tippett’s Fanfare is as distinctively Tippett as the Brian is pure Brian. His crunching and clashing harmonic ramparts leave one in little doubt as to the composer’s identity.

Bliss’s Fanfare for Coming of Age is adroitly regal with the suggestion of terraces and battlements - I wondered if it was intended for the Investiture of the Prince of Wales - no such thing. It dates from 1972 and was written for the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra. Bliss’s six Royal Fanfares include side-drum and cymbal. They’re very inventive. The Bliss Fanfare for Heroes looks back to the 1930 masterpiece Morning Heroes but only passim. Bliss’s Homage to Shakespeare is self-consciously antiquarian but with plenty of magniloquent Purcellian ‘attitude’.

Rubbra’s Fanfare for Europe has a slow and grand gait built and is around the notes EEC. It was written for the UK’s entry into the EU. Rather like the Bliss sequence, which also sports a central interlude, Jacob’s Interludes for trumpets and trombones is inventive but unlike the Bliss it has something of Rubbra’s Farnaby Improvisations about it. It dates from 1951. The three Benjamin microscopies are imperiously clamorous. Walton’s arrangement of a Queen’s Fanfare starts in with reminiscences of the Prelude and Spitfire Fugue. Michael Coe piles the dissonance and complexity high for his uniquely disquieting arrangement of the national anthem. It’s bound, playfully and magnificently, to disorientate any audience.

The programme notes are by Noel Goodwin.

Elite brass playing superbly recorded in 1977 and all at bargain price.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London 3-4 March 1993 and 9 February 1994 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ben Connellan Richard Smoker (Assistant)

Classical Music

It is over 15 years since Neeme Järvi and the RSNO made a new recording for Chandos. So it is with great pleasure that we announce this recording which marks Järvi's return to Scotland in his capacity as Conductor Laureate at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This 67-minute, orchestra-only version of Wagner's famous opera cycle, 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' is arranged by Henk de Vlieger, arranger, composer and percussionist in the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. The work was commissioned by the orchestra ad the result is a 14-section fiery musical spectacle entitled 'The Ring, an orchestral adventure'. this symphonic 'compilation' compresses Wagner's four might Ring operas, yet includes all the major themes and 'leitmotifs'. The result is an overwhelming experience and a must for anyone who loves blazing orchestral colours. The Minneapolis Tribune wrote, 'The way that De Vlieger has created transitions between scenes and acts is quite ingenious...' 'Bits of Rheingold, Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung floated past, melded together as if some Wagnerian superman who understood the whole and articulated it in particular. Highlights were everywhere. Horns, sounded offstage and on, reminded listeners of the great arias, without the singers to sing it...Toward the end, it actually seemed like we had experienced the entire Ring cycle - a tribute to the orchestrator's talents,' wrote the Boston Herald following a performance of the work. Coupled to this mighty work is 'Siegfried Idyll', which is thematically related to the Ring, and although with quite a different subject matter, complements the 'Orchestral Adventure' perfectly.

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.

The 2002 production of Berg's Lulu by Richard jones is generally agreed to be one of the best things to come from troubled English National Opera in recent years. Chandos has done everyone a favour by transferring its 2005 revival lock, stock and smoking revolver from the opera house to the studio...This is important for several reasons. Lulu can seem forbidding to the uninitiated. Its amoral characters, its sordid plot, its enigmatic anti-heroine, its complex (and masterful) formal design: all these aspects repel some as much as they attract others. Yet cabaret burlesque is as integral to the opera's make-up as high operatic tragedy. Paul Daniel and the Chandos engineers don't let us forget it. Piano, saxophone and vibraphone get the prominence they deserve...Richard Stokes has rendered Wedekind's demotic text aptly and brilliantly...For Lulu in the raw, a Rosenkavalier with no underwear, I'll take this.
- Peter Quantrill, THE GRAMOPHONE

Recorded in: St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, London 2, 3 March 1990 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Peter Newble (assistant)

Recorded in: Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk 15-16 March 1993 Producer(s) Trygg Tryggvason Sound Engineer(s) Trygg Tryggvason

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Recording information: Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, England (01/19/2009-01/21/2009).