Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Hallé and Sir Mark Elder are reunited with Sunwook Kim in long awaited studio recordings of repertoire with which he won the Leeds Piano Competition. London-based Sunwook Kim came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18, becoming the competition's youngest winner for 40 years, as well as its first Asian winner. His performance of Brahms's Concerto No. 1 with Hallé and Sir Mark Elder in the competition's finals attracted unanimous praise from the press. Since then, he has established a reputation as one of the finest pianists of his generation, appearing as a concerto soloist with many of the world's leading orchestras and in major recital venues in London, across Europe and in Japan. Sunwook Kim has also enjoyed an ongoing relationship with the Hallé Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder, performing in a variety of repertoire across a number of seasons. Here they return to Brahms' two masterworks; pieces which were separated by two decades and which display very differing musical and emotional outlooks, from the more ardent First to the more rhapsodic Second. Elder and Kim perform the Second Concerto together at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester in April 2017.

Described as being "one of his most important utterances," Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 was written as a response to the sinister unsigned article which appeared in Pravda, the state newspaper, in January 1936, denouncing the composer and implying the ultimate threat, during the time of Stalin's "Great Terror." Whilst the messages of the Symphony have been subject to a variety of often conflicting interpretations, the music and vivid orchestral writing, to which the Halle live performance fully attests, have earned it a leading place in the composer's legacy. In coupling the Symphony with the Four Romances which immediately pre-date it, Elder sheds light on his interpretation of the meaning of the Symphony. The latter work quotes thematic material used in the first of the Pushkin settings in which faith is expressed that art can survive even the most brutal oppression and desecration, perhaps revealing an element of pride that the composer had been true to his art in the face of state threats. James Platt is one of the leading British singers of his generation who frequently appears in the major opera houses across Europe and in concert performances with leading international ensembles and conductors.

Classical Music

The latest release in Hallé’s award winning series of recordings of works by Elgar couples his last great choral work with a fascinating collection of works which similarly remember the departed. Previous Elgar choral releases of The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom, and The Apostles were universally acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including a Gramophone Award for each release. The largely overlooked The Spirit of England is arguably Elgar’s last great choral work. Thematically linked to The Dream of Gerontius the work sets texts from WWI poets and was premiered in sections during 1916 and 1917. In tone it is close to the melancholy of the Cello Concerto and Britten referred to its music as displaying “a personal tenderness and grief” as well as “genuine splendour”. The melodrama (spoken words with musical accompaniment) of A Voice in the Wilderness movingly depicts the contrasting moods of the desolate and subdued Western Front by night and the soaring, aspiring lines given to a war-time Belgian peasant girl. The remaining two works on the album present works inspired by Irish literature. Grania and Diarmid was a play based on tales of Irish mythology. Elgar’s music for the play, a story of tragic entangled love, was described by playright W.B. Yeats as “wonderful in its heroic melancholy”. Bax’s rarely performed orchestral work In Memoriam is subtitled ‘An Irish Elegy’. It reflects the composer’s passionate interest in, and love for, Ireland, her literature and her tragic early twentieth century history – including the Easter Rising of April 1916 and the subsequent execution of some of its leaders which deeply shocked Bax. The resultant music contracts outbursts of anger with episodes featuring melody of profound sadness and lyricism.

Classical Music

For TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS SUMMARY, please expand note below:

One of the best parts of the Halle Christmas celebration is the inclusion of the entire Halle family- the Halle and Halle Choir, as well as Halle’s Youth Choir and Children’s Choir. This lovely collection of popular, rare, and newly discovered holiday gems will bring festivity to all of your holiday gatherings. Compositions include works from film composers such as John Williams and Nigel Hess, as well as choral superstars like John Rutter and John Gardner. Especially notable is the orchestral showpiece Noel!, which was written specifically for Halle and conductor Stephen Bell by Roderick Elms, and is receiving here its world premiere recording. “A lovely festive celebration and a reminder of what Christmas is all about” (Oldham Chronicle)

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TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS:

A Christmas Overture - Nigel Hess
O Holy Night Adam - arr. Battiwalla *
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day - John Gardner ^
In Dulci Jubilo - arr. Pearsall *^
Noel - Roderick Elms
Somewhere in my Memory - John Williams ~
Fairytale Sleighride - Adam Saunders
Angels’ Carol - John Rutter *
Waltz, Winter Bonfire - Sergei Prokofiev
Personent Hodie - arr. Gustav Holst *
The Holy Boy - John Ireland
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree - Elizabeth Poston ^
A Christmas Carnival - Richard Bissill
In The Bleak Midwinter - Harold Darke/Christina Rossetti *^
Dance of the Tumblers - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Christmas on the Beach at Waikiki - Marta Keen arr. Alwyn Green ~
Sleighride - Leroy Anderson
We wish you a Merry Christmas *^

Conductor
Stephen Bell

Soloists/Artists
Hallé Choir *
Hallé Youth Choir ^
Hallé Children's Choir ~

Among the first releases on the Hallé recording label, established in 2003, were Elgar’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. This recording revisits those works nearly 20 years later and marks the culmination of Sir Mark Elder’s tenure as Music Director. The First Symphony was premiered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in 1908 by the Hallé and its Music Director, Hans Richter, to whom the symphony is dedicated. It is a work of astonishing musical and structural mastery which was greeted with worldwide acclaim, receiving one hundred performances in its first year. The musical material demonstrates Elgar’s skill at melody and transformation and presents a wide emotional range.

By contrast, the Second Symphony, with its deeply personal ‘pilgrimage of a soul,’ initially received a more muted reception. However, it came into its own after the end of the First World War when the tone of remembrance and tribute possibly reflected the national mood, in what is now considered to be one of Elgar’s finest works.

Sir Mark Elder has long been hailed for his interpretation of the works of Sir Edward Elgar. This special release box set celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Hallé label and marks Hallé’s Elgar oratorios festival at the Bridgewater Hall in June 2023. Elgar’s three major oratorios are brought together in this special release box set. The multiple award-winning recordings feature the highly acclaimed Hallé Chorus and Youth Choir and a stellar line-up of major international vocal soloists.

In 2021 Hallé marked the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death with a ground-breaking film of The Soldier’s Tale, subsequently shown on BBC Four on Remembrance Sunday 2022.

This album features specially remastered audio of the highly acclaimed soundtrack, featuring principal players of the Hallé under Music Director Sir Mark Elder.

At the height of the First World War, when Stravinsky and collaborators needed to generate funds, they devised this landmark piece of music theater, which would be suitable for touring due to its small scale. Based on Russian folk songs, the score sees Stravinsky at his unique and evocative best, in music featuring great rhythmic interest, lyrical beauty, humor, jazz, and popular dances.

Hallé principals under Music Director Sir Mark Elder deliver an acclaimed performance of great skill and colour. This modern morality tale feels as relevant today as when it was written, and Jeremy Sams’ witty and engaging translation of Ramuz’s French text provides the perfect backdrop to an ensemble of actors who brilliantly display the story’s characters.

This album represents the culmination of what leading British baritone Roderick Williams described as ‘a dream come true’. It features premiere recordings of his orchestrations of songs by Vaughan Williams and other composers associated with him and is released to commemorate those who perished in WWI. Featuring orchestrations by Williams of his favorite songs from the 20th Century English repertoire, this album contains works by Vaughan Williams and composers associated with him. It includes specially commissioned new arrangements of songs by women composers Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring and Rebecca Clarke. The album features the work of composers who were killed in the First World War, George Butterworth, William Denis Browne and Ernest Farrar and is released to coincide with Remembrance Day.

These songs portray the composers’ evocative responses to the poetry they set, and Williams’s orchestrations further convey the songs meaning through highly effective use of orchestral instruments and textures. Roderick Williams OBE is one of Britain’s most sought-after baritones and is constantly in demand on the concert platform and in recital, encompassing a repertoire from the baroque to world premieres. In 2016 he won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the year award. He is also a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room and live on national radio. He was awarded an OBE for services to music in June 2017.

Recorded live in Manchester's Bridgewater Hall over two evenings in May, 2009, this concert recording of Wagner's Götterdämmerung easily stands among the work's three or four finest on disc. For starters, it is sumptuously yet naturally engineered, with voices and instruments in ideal perspective, and there's realistic depth and definition to the orchestral image no matter how texturally complex or threadbare. As with Reginald Goodall, Mark Elder's tempos are slow, but they never, ever drag because the conductor's strong inner rhythm fuels the carefully coaxed and painstakingly balanced linear strands.

This is mainly apparent in orchestral interludes. In Siegfried's Rhine Journey, for example, notice the churning string accompaniment's pronounced dynamic gradations, and the rarely heard leitmotivs that bubble to the surface. The myriad tempo changes and drawn out rests in the hunting scene leading up to and including Siegfried's dying words are taken on faith as they often are not, and the conductor plays up the gnawing half-step steerhorn dissonances in Act 2 while letting the low strings slightly drag, creating a kind of primeval sound world that couldn't be more appropriate for the moment. It also allows for the choral antiphony to build momentum and maintain full comprehensibility.

And what a cast! Lars Cleveman's multi-leveled vocal acting and musical security add up to an impressively tender, proud, and vulnerable Siegfried. Katarina Dalayman's Brünnhilde holds equal allure, and equal tonal command in all registers. In Alberich's brief scene at the start of Act 2, Bayreuth veteran Andrew Shore is a little too guttural at times, but Attila Jun's dark yet agile Hagen nearly steals the show--and that's not to take anything away from Peter Coleman-Wright's sensitive singing as Gunther. Some listeners may find Susan Bickley a more understated, less emotive Waltraute than "tradition" deems, yet her impeccable diction and legato control speak for themselves. I also should mention the Norns and the Rhinemaidens--what splendid and superbly blended vocal trios!

Although the opera could have fit onto four CDs, a five-disc deployment allows Act 2 to stand alone on one disc, and for Act 3 to be logically divided across two discs as Act 1 usually is. The fifth disc contains a full libretto and English translation as a PDF document. Even if you already own Solti (Decca), Keilberth (Testament), or Barenboim (Teldec), Elder's Götterdämmerung adds up to a most fulfilling and modestly priced dramatic and musical experience that no serious Wagnerian should miss.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Consistently high musical standards...excellent sound quality too.

Mark Elder insists that he and the Hallé Orchestra are not in the process of recording a full Ring cycle. That's a great shame, as this Walküre is as fine a recording as their previous and much-lauded Götterdämmerung. Wagner recorded live in concert is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception, and full Ring cycles in that format from both Gergiev and Janowski are scheduled for the composer's bicentenary in 2013. No doubt both will be impressive offerings, but it is hard to imagine that either will have anything further to say on Walküre than Mark Elder has had to say here.
 
The performance was split across two consecutive evenings at the Manchester International Festival in 2011. There were no patch sessions, but the mics were in place at the rehearsals, and some of this has been edited in. The result manages to capture the best of both worlds - it's as note-perfect as a studio recording, but as atmospheric and dramatically coherent as a concert performance.
 
From Mark Elder's description of the project, the whole thing was much more precarious than the assured quality of the recording suggests. The concerts were only made possible through sponsorship hastily convened by the Manchester Festival. The cast includes three singers, Sarah Castle, Yvonne Howard and Elaine McKrill, who were drafted in as short-notice replacements.
 
Mark Elder is clearly the sort of conductor who would only embark on such a project if he knew he could do it full justice. He has rehearsed the orchestra magnificently, not only to follow his occasionally esoteric tempos, but also to maintain a consistency of spirit and tone across the huge spans of each of the acts. Elder also has that crucial operatic quality of being able to give his soloists, both vocal and instrumental, the space they need to shape their melodic lines, while still maintaining the symphonic logic of the whole. The orchestra repays his confidence in them with inspired playing at every turn. The horns deserve a special mention. They are kept busy throughout, but rarely have the horn parts sounded so fresh and vital as here. Great woodwind playing too. The woodwind soloists really benefit from the quality of the sound recording, which both balances them against the ensemble, and picks them out from the centre of the group with consistent clarity. You'll also hear better trumpets and trombones here than on most other recordings of the work.
 
The performance is very much an interpretation, with Mark Elder imprinting his musical personality on every phrase. Elder's pacing is similar to the way he speaks. It is steady, clear and undemonstrative. Clarity of phrase and rhythm comes though accentuation, from the heels of the strings' bows and from the brass, while the passion and drama are projected through the very wide dynamic range. The orchestral set pieces - the Act 1 Prelude, the Ride of the Valkyries, the Magic Fire music - are all on the steady side as far as tempos go. The definite and deliberate accentuation ensures that the slower speeds never threaten the atmosphere or drama. Everything feels like an emphatic statement, and nothing is ever treated as trivial or transitory. In the context of other famous recordings of the work, Elder's steady tempos resemble Haitink, the agogic weight from the orchestra approaches Solti, while the communication from the podium and the immaculate preparation are more akin to Karajan.
 
There are no huge names in the cast, which ironically helps to maintain consistent quality between the singers. Every one of them is equal to Wagner's challenges, and despite the concert hall setting, there is a real feeling of dramatic involvement from each of the leads. Susan Bickley is a suitably angry Fricka, while Susan Bullock's Brünnhilde sounds both wayward and emotionally complex. The singers also articulate the German with a rare clarity, another quality that benefits from the excellent sound engineering. The bass in the mix is particularly strong and well-defined, all the better to hear the excellent performances from the lower male voices, Clive Bayley as Hunding and Eglis Silins as Wotan.
 
No cast for a Wagner opera is completely flawless. Susan Bullock is considered one of the finest Brünnhildes of today, but I find her wide, penetrating vibrato excessive, especially on the top notes. That said, her performance is less abrasive than on the recent recording of the work from Frankfurt Opera (Oehms Classics OC 936). Despite the fact that the opera was divided across two nights, some of the singers can be heard to tire, which is perfectly understandable given the duration and intensity of many of the monologues. Stig Andersen's Siegmund sounds much fresher at the start of Act 1 than at the end. Eglis Silins has similar problems towards the end of Act 2, although he's back on form for Act 3, and then manages to maintain the tone right until the end.
 
These are minor quibbles though, and the overall impression this recording gives is of consistently high musical standards from singers and orchestra alike. Excellent sound quality too, all of which suggests significant investment to make the recording the best it could possibly be. The packaging is a little less opulent. The booklet gives only a track-listing, a very brief synopsis and an orchestra list, all on unlaminated paper. An additional CD-ROM is included with images of the concerts and a pdf libretto. In fact, there are only three photos, a cursory offering at best, and the libretto seems redundant, considering that it is widely available online. Personally, I'd rather a pdf of the full score, which could easily be added at no further expense to anybody.
 
The packaging is the only concession to economy here, and if the qualities of the recording itself were not enough to recommend the release, the budget price tag ought to seal the deal. Even the reissues of Solti and Karajan conducting the opera cost more than this brand new one. So here's hoping that the resources and opportunities will be found for a Rheingold and Siegfried in the same series. Should they materialise, this could become one of the great Ring cycles of our times.
 
-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International

The Hallé label shows both artistry and acumen in this release. This is something to celebrate among the legion of RVW mavens. It is the first complete recording of Vaughan Williams music for the 1909 Cambridge University production in Greek of the comic satire "the Wasps" by Aristophanes. The wide appetite of the classical music audience for Vaughan Williams is strong and not just in England. Rather like Britten and Tippett his music has travelled and enjoyed performances and nurtured enthusiasm far and wide. Mark Elder, who has done so much for the renaissance of the Hallé, is to be congratulated for his decision to associate himself with the project and for directing with such vitality. In a way the incongruity of the music in relation to the plot and satire hardly matters even where a taste of the drama is given through the David Pountney narration. I detect very little satire in this music. The music now seems inextricably and delightfully bound up in the English countryside, its cheeriness and its verdant beauty.

The narration explodes onto the scene with a strangulated scream of ‘Bastard!’ from the rough trade of Henry Goodman doing his best Ray Winstone act. Some flavour of the narration and the singing is in tr. 5 in CD1 where the tenors sing: ‘Could you not find any clean underwear?’ The whole effect is of one of those de luxe BBC Radio productions with full orchestral apparatus as in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Brecht’s Schweik in World War Two and in Flecker’s Hassan. The music plays over the snores, moans, speaking, salt and spleen of narrator Goodman. The overture starts to mean more when one hears the buzzing main theme sung by the chorus in ‘When we buzz’. The Hallé Chorus are in sterling voice singing like a phalanx of football thugs at one moment and classically lightly English at another (CD1 tr. 11 1:26).

CD2 includes Acts II and III. It launches with a delicate, tip-toe night march purged of all absurd overtones - sheerly delightful writing (Entr’Acte). This continues but with the absurdist gearbox fully engaged in The March Past of the Witnesses. This is RVW the far-seeing anticipating Prokofiev which he does again at 5:10 in tr. 15 where rather than Love for Three Oranges it is the Classical Symphony that is echoed/predicted. The Chorus Parabasis (CD2 tr. 7) recalls the mellifluous lilt of Serenade to Music and the writing of Vaughan Williams’ teacher Ravel. Back to spleen and bawdiness again in Pountney’s words for Melodrama (tr. 15): "Out of my way, you bunch of faggots, you pussy-footing plonkers ..." And there’s more, dear reader. This is not for the genteel auntie. Do bear in mind that here in the sung and spoken text you catch something of the football terraces and of punk. This is RVW red in tooth and claw. Then again other sections such as the flute and harp troubadourisms of Chorus and Dance (tr. 15 at 00:55) recall the writing in Sir John in Love. At the end where Procleon snores the effect predicts the somnolent Sir John Falstaff. It is equally Falstaffian - but in a different way - when he half wakes and mutters with drooling relish: "Show your daddy your dainty tussies and set them all in motion." It is a multi-faceted score - frankly fascinating.

Vaughan Williams re-scored parts of the music for the well known five movement orchestral suite. It is that suite and the overture by which most listeners will know some of this music. There is no competition for this set.

The set includes the full score of 80 minutes and incorporated dialogue of circa 25 minutes. The documentation is non-pareil with Michael Kennedy’s essay, David Pountney’s preface, full texts in English only, artist profiles and a listing of all personnel in the orchestra.

If you are interested, the full study score can be obtained from Faber Music. This is based on the editorial work of Igor Kennaway who back in the early 1990s conducted one of the best ever productions of RVW’s ‘morality’ Pilgrim’s Progress.

Some may find this an unnerving experience but it works superbly well provided you are ready for the salty dialogue. It’s a small price to pay for the fascination and delight of hearing so much familiar and unfamiliar Vaughan Williams.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Mark Elder leads the Halle Orchestra in two beautiful works by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The 8th Symphony was written for, and premiered by, Sir John Barbirolli and the Halle orchestra in 1956 and is noted for an enlarged and colorful percussion section. The music is among the more light hearted and sunny of Vaughan Williams' scores. The lyrical, richly melodious 5th Symphony embraces the world of nature and human emotions one finds in the Tallis Fantasia and Serenade to Music. This concert was recorded live in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 9th November 2011.

Review quote:

"Elder made a splendid job of it, capturing its quizzical nature to a nicety and balancing the orchestral sound with a skill that drew out the subtlest of Vaughan Williams’s instrumental colourings." - Richard Fairman, Financial Times, (Review of Symphony No.8 Royal Albert Hall Proms, July 2008)

This is the newest release from Halle, continuing their series of Vaughan Williams symphonies in live recordings from the Bridgewater Hall. The Sixth Symphony caused a sensation at its premiere in 1948 and was performed 100 times in the following two years. It was composed during a period in which Vaughan Williams was writing film scores, the experience of which had the effect of sparking his imagination in the extravagant use of the orchestra. The work is claimed by many to have an external ‘war’ programme, a fact dismissed by the composer. Either way the result is undoubtedly one of Vaughan Williams’ finest works; a tightly woven musical statement, with stunning melodies and orchestration which is at turns dramatic and expressive. The Fourth Symphony was first performed in 1925 and, echoed the relative dissonance of recent works such as the oratorio Sancta Civitas, the Piano Concerto and the masque for Dancing Job. Structurally it gives a nod to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and it includes material based on traditional forms as well as elements of self-portraiture, with music displaying the composer’s temper, humour and ribaldry.

This exhilarating album contains stunning live symphonic performances of works by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). Included in this recording are his Symphony No. 5 in E Flat Major, Op. 82, Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105, and En Saga, Op. 9.

“...raw, massive, glacial, thrilling. Elder and the Halle have a strong track record in this repertoire.” - The Observer

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Currently there seems to be no stopping the resurgence of interest in John Ireland's music. His cause is certainly being helped by a number of new and reissued recordings, a splendid biography The Music of John Ireland by Fiona Richards (2000) and the hard work by the John Ireland Charitable Trust.

It is not difficult to imagine a wry and knowing smile of satisfaction on the face of Ireland's great teacher Sir Charles Stanford. Although their relationship was often fraught and his teacher's methods considered harsh the influential Stanford loved to see his pupils having success. Ireland certainly came a long way from his days as a vulnerable young student at the Royal College of Music (1897-1901). An easy target for ridicule by attending his early classes wearing knickerbockers and boots; goodness knows what psychological damage he was caused. In 1898 the great master Stanford said to his young pupil, 'All water and Brahms me bhoy and more water than Brahms …Study some Dvořák for a bit and bring me something that isn't like Brahms' ('Charles Villiers Stanford' by Paul Rodmell, Ashgate 2002). Stanford's rebuke seemingly did the trick and Ireland soon produced his precocious and charming Sextet for clarinet, horn and string quartet. 
The opening track of this Hallé label disc is the symphonic rhapsody Mai-Dun that Ireland completed in 1921. It seems that the score was inspired by Maiden Castle, the Iron Age hill fort, a structure that reflected Ireland's great interest in historic sites such as fortifications and pagan burial sites. Throughout one is aware of the variegated nature of the score alternating the serious nature of war with calmer passages representing peace.

The tone poem The Forgotten Rite was composed in 1913/14. The work is a product of Ireland's interest in the archaeological sites on the island of Jersey and his fascination with the Arcadian vision of the Greek God Pan. A strong undercurrent is the sense of mystery and one can easily imagine the scene of dawn breaking over a stormy seascape.

The inspiration for the orchestral overture Satyricon from 1944/46 was literary. The character of the boy Giton from the 'Satyricon' of Petronius Arbiter appealed strongly to Ireland. I enjoyed the energetic and effervescent rhythms that at times seemed distinctly Bernsteinesque. With shimmering and soaring string melodies of increasing intensity Ireland inhabits a soundworld close to that of say Max Steiner's score to Victor Fleming's Hollywood blockbuster Gone with the Wind (1939). I loved the strong bucolic feel of the solo passage for clarinet followed by the flute at 4:01-4:57.

Also in the year 1946 Ireland was commissioned to write the score to the film The Overlanders. The Harry Watt film recounted the hazardous journey of driving cattle across the vast country of Australia. John Wilson conducts the five movement suite prepared by Sir Charles Mackerras and published in 1971. I was reminded of the suitability of Ireland's music to Baz Luhrmann's film Australia the 2008 epic romance starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman which shares an uncannily similar plot to that of The Overlanders. In particular I enjoyed the third movement Intermezzo: Open Country which is convincingly evocative of Jackaroos on horseback driving herds of cattle across the Australian bush.

In the manner of Elgar's Cockaigne Overture (In London Town) and Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony Ireland was inspired by the sights and sounds of London to write an orchestral score. His A London Overture (1936) is a reworking of the earlier Comedy Overture from 1934 scored for brass band. With music that never reaches anywhere close to the heights of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Ireland's moderately convincing score seems to lose its way especially in the middle section.

In 1942 Ireland was commissioned by the British Ministry of Information to write a morale boosting patriotic score; the Epic March was the result. It seems that the score contains several musical references to various personalities that were significant in Ireland's life. At times in the Epic March I heard slight reminders of the Walford Davies/George Dyson RAF March Past. Despite the enthusiastic promptings of conductor John Wilson the Epic March, although agreeable, only revealed to me its lacklustre quality.

The music of John Ireland is served extremely well by John Wilson and the Hallé who are on splendid form. These engaging and refreshing readings serve to reinforce to me how far the orchestra has come in recent years. The sound quality from Studio 7 at the BBC at Oxford Road, Manchester is a credit to the engineers. Fiona Richards's booklet notes are as authoritative as I had expected.

-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

Following unparalleled success with recordings for orchestra and choir, including awards in recent years from both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, the Hall� and Sir Mark Elder present a compelling program of evocative and rarely-performed works. The performances of these works perfectly illustrate the renaissance that has been achieved at the Hall� under Sir Mark Elder, including from the two Hall� choirs. The recording also features acclaimed British baritone Roderick Williams, a soloist at the height of his powers, in repertoire that is perfectly suited to his lyrical, dramatic, and musical expertise.

A marvellous disc of unjustly neglected English music, superbly played.

The planning behind this disc shows not only enterprise but also great imagination. Here we have four very different responses to Spring from three English composers.

Bax’s Spring Fire is a great rarity. Indeed, in his recent very wide ranging interview with Michael Cookson, Sir Mark Elder says he knows he is the only conductor who currently performs the work – because he’s in possession of the only set of parts! Earlier in his conversation with Michael, he refers to the work as “a masterpiece, a huge orchestral piece.” That belief in the quality of the score shines out in this very fine live performance. For all its rarity, the piece has had a previous recording, by that other doughty champion of English music, Vernon Handley. That was made in 1986 (CHAN 8464) and the coupling is more Bax, though I think Elder’s programme is the more interesting.

Spring Fire dates from 1913 and is cast in five movements, which play continuously – though, as Lewis Foreman points out in his note for the Handley recording, at one point Bax thought of combining the first two movements. The piece is fascinating and often full-blooded, though the opening movement, ‘In the Forest before Dawn’, is gorgeously languid. As Spring Fire unfolds the orchestration is increasingly colourful, detailed and brilliant. The depiction of sunrise, just before the end of the second movement, may not be as expansive or extended as in Daphnis et Chloé but it has, perhaps, more pagan exaltation. The third movement, ‘Full Day’, is hedonistic and exuberant. Here especially Elder’s Hallé brings Bax’s rich scoring excitingly to life though these excellent players are just as convincing in the more delicately scored passages, in which at times a solo quartet of violins features. A slow, sultry passage leads to the penultimate movement, ‘Woodland Love (Romance)’. We’re told in the useful booklet notes that the score is marked ‘romantic and glowing’, followed by ‘drowsily’. That’s just how the music sounds here. This spacious, erotically charged music is superbly realised by Elder; the playing has delicacy and refinement and the various solos are delivered excellently. The final movement is entitled ‘Maenads’ after the female followers of Dionysus. The music is headlong, riotously colourful and celebratory. The orchestra really gets hold of the piece and the brass and percussion in particular have a field day. It’s good to hear such a rare piece receiving warm applause from the Mancunian audience but the quality of the performance, which is captured in vivid sound, more than justifies the reception.

Another rarity is Idylle de Printemps by Delius, one of his earlier works. According to Calum MacDonald’s notes, the piece was scarcely heard in the composer’s lifetime and even less so thereafter until the 1990s. This is rather odd since apparently Beecham owned the autograph score for many years. Did he play it and, if not, why not? It’s not a work that I can recall coming across much – if at all – in the past but it’s well worth hearing. As it says in the notes, “the mood is contemplative, taking delight in a sense of the natural world.” The Hallé plays it marvellously, combining warmth and finesse. Incidentally, though this is also a live recording there is no applause afterwards. I hope that this fine new recording will help to establish the piece, for that it what it deserves.

The March of Spring is a much more mature work in every sense. It is the last of the four movements that comprise North Country Sketches and the music shows the composer’s delight at the reviving return of Spring. Sir Mark and his excellent orchestra bring out all the detail of the score in a very fine performance. The use of the word ‘march’ in the title is a bit of a misnomer, though there’s a brief, slightly martial episode a couple of minutes from the end. What Delius has written is more of a celebration of nature and the new life of Spring. It would be good to hear Elder in the complete North Country Sketches.

Frank Bridge’s Enter Spring is not exactly standard repertoire either. If memory serves me right Elder and the Hallé gave this work at the 2010 BBC Proms, which would have been a few weeks after this recording was made. It’s a fairly late work by Bridge and so it comes from the period, after the First World War, when his work had become influenced by some of the more advanced European composers and had become much more adventurous and harmonically unstable. It was commissioned for the 1927 Norwich Festival and I was surprised to learn from Calum MacDonald’s outstanding note on the piece that this was the first – and only – time that Bridge received a commission for an orchestral work. Mr MacDonald relates that the audience for the first performance included the young Benjamin Britten, who was so impressed by what he heard that he resolved to become Bridge’s pupil. Britten said that he was impressed by the work’s ‘riot of colour and harmony’ and so can we be in this splendid Hallé performance. I know of three previous recordings, all of which I admire very much. There’s the 2000 recording by Richard Hickox, part of his Chandos series of Bridge orchestral music. There’s also what was the pioneering account – in the sense that it was the first to be issued – by Sir Charles Groves, which was made in 1975. Most interesting of all, in many ways, is the live account conducted by Benjamin Britten in 1967, forty years after he attended that première. According to the notes with the present disc, the Britten performance represented the revival of the work; it had not been played for thirty-five years. Britten’s reading was issued in 1999 by BBC Legends (BBCB 8007-2). I fear that will be long deleted but if you ever track down a copy, snap it up for the performance and, indeed, the entire content of the disc, is well worth hearing.

It’s quite a while since I listened to Enter Spring and I was very interested to note the disparity between the various conductors in terms of the time each takes to play the score. Groves is the most expansive, taking 21:22. Hickox and Britten are significantly swifter overall at 18:36 and 19:44 respectively. Elder is closer to Groves at 20:50. I must say, while in no way disparaging the considerable merits of his rivals, that I admire Elder’s way with the score enormously. His is an expansive but not indulgent reading. He’s particularly successful, I think, in balancing the often teeming detail of the score – and credit for that must also go to the engineers. The Hallé’s playing is absolutely superb. I think this is now the finest account of this important score that I know; Bridge’s prodigious invention and great originality is revealed by a highly sympathetic interpreter and a top flight orchestra.

This is a marvellous disc. The repertoire is unusual but fully deserving of the public’s attention. Sir Mark Elder has already attracted many plaudits for his advocacy of English music but, if I may say so, it’s great to see him prepared to venture quite far off the beaten track. Music such as is contained on this disc isn’t desperately fashionable but its neglect is unjustified, as performances of this calibre show. I hope that Elder will undertake more works by these three composers for advocacy such as this can only further the cause of their music.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

A double width case houses this 4 CD anthology of English classics reissued from individual discs that have appeared over the last decade. Sir Mark Elder CBE conducts the Hallé except for the orchestral Ireland items which come from a collection where the conductor was John Wilson. The first three discs are direct replicas of previous Hallé volumes including English Landscapes, English Rhapsody and English Spring. CD 4 has been compiled from a range of Hallé CDs including the groundbreaking complete RVW music for The Wasps.

The CD 1 (English Rhapsody CDHLL7503) Butterworth items are lovingly and most affectingly paced and weighted. Listen to the second phrase in A Shropshire Lad. No need for embarrassment in the company of Barbirolli or Boult. The Delius items are similarly successful with Elder switching to elusive languid melancholy and ecstasy. Brigg Fair is helpfully tracked into five segments. Then Hallé do something unusual – they add the Grainger setting of Brigg Fair by the Hallé Choir with James Gilchrist as the exposed tenor soloist. Gilchrist is outstanding but the choir’s close-up rough textures grate slightly. The last item is another Brigg Fair reference with the folk singer, the 75 year old, Joseph Taylor heard in a 1908 recording.

CD 2 (English Rhapsody CDHLL7512) starts with another classic essayed by one of Elder’s predecessors in Manchester, Barbirolli – Bax’s Tintagel. Fellow reviewer, Em Marshall did not warm to this disc. For my part I found it very satisfying; each to his or her own. The Tintagel is tautly done with some very sharply delineated effects adding to the romantic sweep and tension of the piece. I certainly prefer it over Boult’s Lyrita reading though not over the supple Barbirolli and the stormily driven Bostock and Goossens. The Lark Ascending is pretty cool and I too found it unengaging. By contrast the Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 works rather well and the analytical recording complements the mystery of the music. The Finzi was taken at a brisk pace but is a success. The Delius pieces, especially the second, have a lambent glow. Then more from the Hallé Choir who sound in warmer voice and gleamingly resolved tone.

I reviewed English Spring earlier this year. It is reproduced on CD 3. The concert-live Bax Spring Fire is the single longest piece in this collection. I recall listening to the whole CD several times over on a long journey. I found it then and still find it a fine interpretation with exemplary recording engineering to match. The other spring pieces are just as good. The salon-inflected Idylle spins a really memorable melody with expert hands – early Delius unlike the fully mature movement from North Country Sketches – which I always think of as Delius for people who think they don’t like Delius. The Bridge is a masterpiece and no mistake and compares very favourably with versions by Groves, Hickox, Judd, Marriner and the meritorious and unfairly overlooked John Carewe (Pearl SHECD9601).

The last disc has its programme culled from a variety of discs. The label, Hallé and Elder have squared up to the Elgar legacy in a major way with only The Apostles now outstanding. Their Elgar list is ample: Elgar portrait; Symphony 1; Symphony 2; Enigma; Violin Concerto; Cello Concerto and Falstaff; Gerontius and The Kingdom. Elder’s Cockaigne is recorded with wonderfully textural clarity and thudding impact. The beguiling innocence of Dream Children is wondrously done as is the lightly and elegantly sighing Serenade where rather like Cockaigne Elder is up against Barbirolli’s iconic recordings. It’s all most touchingly done. The RVW Wasps Overture is well enough done and buzzes and sings well. The Act II Entr’Acte has a few Straussian moments. Then another march – this time a gawky one in the March Past of the Witnesses. The music is magically imaginative – try tr.10: the Act III Entr’Acte. Exit Elder – enter Wilson currently the darling of the Broadway musical and Big Band revival cadre (That’s Entertainment) with highly effective and street-sharp Bond and Sondheim Proms resounding to his credit. His John Ireland is brilliant but the mystery of The Forgotten Rite does not come across as it does with Boult (Lyrita) and Thomson (Chandos). The untypical but still splendid Epic March is much more effective. This is the splendid British march mantle worn and stepped out with complete aplomb. The character is more bitterly warlike than usual with a touch of Elgar P&C4 and Bliss’s Things to Come.

Determination and nobility. The liner notes are assembled from the original issues.

This sheaf of anthologies is satisfying. The recording quality is uniformly good with some very fine readings along the way. These are not always the very best in the catalogue but nothing here disappoints. A much better than worthy introduction to English music of the first half of last century.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International