Sobriety of presentation – it takes confidence to make this choice in a world of attention-grabbing design coups. Lyrita’s assertive but understated style goes with competence and a well placed confidence that they have something substantial to offer which does not require lurid colours or wild experimentation. In that sense Lyrita can be compared with Matt Walters’ First Edition - a most treasurable label. The rather matte effect of the covers here is consistent with the design of the Lyrita LP sleeves. In fact a number of the new CDs have used the LP designs or details from them e.g. Hadley/Finzi and Ireland volume 1.

This generous Rawsthorne disc is packed tight with three major works and the most famous of his concert overtures. I recall Symphonic Studies from the CFP LP which coupled the Lambert recording of the Rawsthorne work with the Goehr recording (now on NMC) of Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Pritchard delivers a most successful performance and he is recorded by the Lyrita team with typical mastery and with a sympathetic ear or microphone leaning towards the horns. It’s a work often in a lather of emotional turmoil but it’s too easy to overlook the more reflective moments such as the Lento (tr. 5). This recording was first issued as a coupling on LP (SRCS 90) with the Rawsthorne Symphony No. 1 a work now on SRCD291 with the other two Rawsthorne symphonies. This version of the Symphonic Studies is a shade more headlong on Lyrita than its comparator on Naxos. The ebullient, brusque, breezy and blowsy Street Corner overture was commissioned in 1944 by ENSA alongside such other joyous overtures as Moeran’s Overture to a Masque. The Rawsthorne was first issued on LP on Lyrita SRCS 95. The First Piano Concerto in its outer movements has the brittle brilliance of Prokofiev. Interesting that the composer builds in echoes of the Symphonic Studies at 3:35 in the first movement. After a chilly middle movement the finale is an out-and-out tarantella ending with a cheeky but perfectly weighted smiling flourish. The middle movement has a chilly character. Once again, this time in the Piano Concerto No. 2, Rawsthorne builds in a reminiscence of the Symphonic Studies – listen to it in the bass at 1:47 onwards and elsewhere. This Second Piano Concerto has a more Brahmsian sense of heroism and tragedy than the First Concerto which although written in the 1930s always sounds to me like a refugee from the 1920s. Rawsthorne’s trademark awkward cuss writing is in full evidence throughout and this is emphasised by Malcolm Binns. These are fine recordings although for even more impressive sound do try the Chandos and Naxos versions.

The booklet notes are drawn from the original LP sleeves and are by Alan Frank, Hugo Cole and John McCabe.

The transfers been accomplished with typical professionalism and care. You will not be disappointed if you know the original vinyls.

A generously packed and brilliant Rawsthorne collection which make a perfect complement to the Lyrita Rawsthorne symphonies. Add a few of the Naxos discs - Cello Concerto and the two Violin Concertos - and you have the makings of a fine Rawsthorne shelf.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

The welcome bouquet of this motley crew of premieres and encores from the Lyrita stable.

Pierson's discursive Macbeth tone poem has no specifically Scottish accent although there is the occasional bagpipe skirl. A memorable piece, it has lashings of bel canto and an overall idiom that relates it to Beethoven (symphonies 4 and 8), Ries and Weber. It is no surprise to read that Pierson spent much of his life in Germany. Like Holbrooke and d’Albert he even changed his name to make it more Teutonic. I'd like to hear more Pierson. In this era of recorded revivals there is surely no reason, apart from performing materials issues, why we should not also hear his Hamlet and the overtures As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet.

Handley's reading of the Alan Rawsthorne's Fantasy Overture: Cortèges shows a composer of broader and more varied palette than we might have presumed from the Symphonic Studies and Symphony No.1. This work is about processions of various sorts from grand and sombre to carnival cavalcades. While there are plenty of Rawsthorne hallmarks much of the music is surprisingly varied and delightful. There is also an element familiar from the macabre King Pest mood of Rawsthorne's friend Constant Lambert. In length it is closer to a tone poem than the typical concert overture. A bristlingly inventive score it holds a few surprises for people like me who think they know their Rawsthorne. The piece ends with a quiet tarantella impudence before the street revellers curl up to sleep.

David Morgan was a pupil of Alan Bush and Leighton Lucas at the RAM. He was accorded the honour of an LP from Lyrita coupling his Violin Concerto and the present piece in 1974. Lyrita must have plans for a different coupling for the Violin Concerto which was premiered in Prague in 1967. I see there is also an as yet unrecorded Sinfonia da Requiem which gives "a personal, not a political reaction to the events of August 1968". Its mood is seemingly reflected in the first movement of Contrasts. His Spring Carnival Overture (not on disc) is apparently akin to the music of the second movement. Contrasts is in two movements and is dedicated to the memory of Shostakovich. It's a work of subdued tones and intimations of darkness especially in the first movement. The subtle brilliance of this recording can be heard at tr. 3, 5.51 where the sustained resonance of a gong-stroke is grippingly put across - a delight. In the last movement wheeling and darting brilliance combines with a slightly Shostakovichian flavouring.

Chagrin was active in the worlds of concert music and film. His Helter Skelter overture bestrides the two being based on music he had written for the frothy 1949 film of the same name. Its not quite as pell-mell as you might expect from the title but the atmosphere is certainly as jaunty and uproarious as the cinema music of Auric. Peter Warlock's Serenade for Strings is given a rather pressed performance - more lilt and less impatience would have helped as it did when it was recorded for EMI Classics by Norman del Mar in the late 1960s. It is no surprise that it was written in 1922 for Delius's sixtieth birthday. While Braithwaite might well have miscalculated on the Warlock he is just confidently magnificent in Beckus the Dandipratt which needs and here gets flighted energy, a twist and a skirl as well as a rambunctious snarl and volatility. This is for me the best and most rewarding reading the overture has had even allowing for the composer's own and that of Vernon Handley. Every detail tells whether it is in Rowlandson-style street hurly-burly or Ealing era insouciance.

The notes are by the always thoughtful and invaluably reflective Paul Conway. More please.

The motley nature of this collection and the imperative to use recordings cut loose by other, usually composer-themed, collections does not stop this assemblage having its own very welcome bouquet.

Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Nicholas Braithwaite.

Ukrainian-born conductor Nicolai Malko studied music in St. Petersburg. He eventually began teaching at the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories. Malko had a sporadic relationship with the BBC, and although he was never a staff conductor, he visited, taught, and conducted occasionally from 1929 until his passing in 1962. This 4-disc set contains some of Malko’s best conducting for BBC broadcast, including works by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn, Mussorgsky, Bruckner, and more.

"This well-transferred collection of BBC broadcasts has to be one of the most significant "historical" orchestral releases in recent years. There are of course various commercial discs with Malko; here, though, we have the Russian-born conductor captured in full flight.

The principle novelty is The Kodaly's one-act theater piece The Spinning Room, sung in English, and thoroughly enjoyable. The remainder of the set is purely orchestral.

Minor tape imperfections and playing fluffs notwithstanding, this is a musically enriching set and our experience of the conductor is duly extended." – Gramophone

At the forefront of contemporary music for over six decades, Thea Musgrave is one of the leading composers of her generation. She has conducted many of her own pieces on both sides of the Atlantic. Her vividly imaginative and well-crafted scores resonate with audiences worldwide. Fellow composer Judith Weir has astutely ascribed Musgrave’s exceptionally rich and varied catalogue of works to ‘a capacity for constant self-renewal combined with a shrewd awareness of what is currently happening in musical style.’ This release features three of Musgrave’s works- Phoenix Rising (1997), Loch Ness- A Post Card from Scotland (2012), and Poets in Love (2009). Each of these works is receiving here its world premiere recording.

This is a generous CD of reissues of classic new music from the 1960s, later recordings of which exist only for the Clarinet Concerto (Clarinet Classics, 35), Excursions (Campion 1353) and Monologue (Capstone 8714). They are played by performers then at the height of their powers and with flair and surety that makes this a landmark disc and one to be bought without hesitation by anyone interested in the development of post-war British music in general and Thea Musgrave’s mellow, steady and always inventive style in particular.

Born in Scotland but now resident in the United States, Musgrave’s career and output have always matched breadth with a rather single-minded determination to work as she has wanted to, and not as fad or fashion might have suggested. An example would be her adherence to the dramatic qualities of her music in their conscious rejection of tonality while at the same time avoiding the formality of serialism. Thus the concerto as a genre proved a suitable vehicle for the resultant exploration of structure with gusto. Particularly since, for Musgrave, her music’s performers are more actors than conveyors of a pre-existing score. That’s very evident in the orchestral pieces here.

The Concerto for Orchestra is a work full of tension, tonal and temporal. Indeed, it explores the notion of instruments ‘in revolt’ against the conductor. There is a certain liberality of interpretation (freedom to repeat, with rubato) which is designed to strain the very fabric of the music. For this to be effective the playing has to be impeccable; every note has to be heard; every attack and decay controlled; every timbre distinct. And so it is on this landmark recording by another provincial orchestra (the Scottish National Orchestra) than that to which the work was dedicated (the CBSO). The playing is crisp, vibrant, rounded, tuneful; yet it fully conveys the apparent waywardness of line which is in fact the very essence of the concerto. The supremacy of the clarinet before, throughout and after the stunning tutti and crescendi is key to the work and emerges with great effect here. Exemplary.

Musgrave’s Clarinet Concerto has the distinction of requiring the soloist to promenade through the orchestra. It’s a logical progression after the Concerto for Orchestra - again exploring aural space. Musgrave was (and has remained) fascinated by the way sounds group in space as well as time and ways in which (orchestral) soloists can wrest the lead from the conventional director of events, the conductor. Once again there are extremes of volume and texture. Once again, the forces of - this time - the LSO are more than up to the task, playing with a certainty and conviction that carry the work as far, surely, as Musgrave intended it to go: these were the days before sounds were savoured exclusively for their own sake with emphasis on massed percussion or aleatoric devices. Notable (as was the case with the Concerto for Orchestra) is a major part for harp; there is also a prominent accordion part.

The Horn Concerto also builds upon Musgrave’s concept of ‘Space music’: in this piece members of the horn section themselves move around the hall. There are also ‘prepared’ instruments – a piano with screws, a book and a metal bar; and a harp with paper threaded through some of its strings. This is not a frenetic or self-conscious work; rather a virtuosic and lyrical concerto, although the extent to which the leading role of the horn soloist is established yet undermined confers an iconoclastic quality on the piece. As de Peyer’s in the Clarinet Concerto, Tuckwell’s (the work’s dedicatee) articulation and phrasing in this concerto are outstanding.

Monologue is the earliest (and shortest) piece on this disc; it does experiment with serialism. Again, this is a piece of contrasts and music distinguished by Musgrave’s characteristic ‘tumultuoso’ marking, it still lives in the world of contrasts and the sort of subdued rhetoric which was to interest Musgrave later on in her career when composing vocal and operatic works. Again, beautifully played by Musgrave herself.

Excursions is interesting in that it was written for four hands on one piano also as a teaching piece: one ‘easy part’ for pupils to play with their teachers literally close at hand. In the first four of the eight pieces the easy part is the lower one; in the second four the top one. Miniatures they are – but with a substantial impact. Although they do have descriptive (of car journey) titles, these are only printed in small type at the end of each piece. Inasmuch as the material in Excursions is intended to emphasise learning, composer clearly has much respect for pupil. She is joined by Malcolm Williamson.

This is a disc whose primary interest will certainly be historic: it makes available again music that made waves in the early 70s, but music that has clung to a place in the repertoire – and justly so. Played with conviction and delight by the Scottish National and London Symphony orchestras under Gibson, Del Mar and Musgrave herself, it rightly acts as testament to just how significant and appealing her works were then. Perhaps it will revive interest in them now.

-- Mark Sealey, MusicWeb International

Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950), still the least-known significant English composer of his generation, composed in his prime three large-scale works with orchestra, a symphony (1937), a violin concerto (1942) and a cello concerto (1945). Part of Moeran’s neglect may perhaps be attributed to his derivative musical style. Yet the positive individuality of Moeran’s music, which grew in strength as he became older and is finally shorn of all props in the masterly cello concerto, overrides these derivations in nearly all his works. He is a composer with something to say and an unwavering judgment about the way in which it must be said.

The two works on this new release are BBC Broadcast recordings from 1973 and 1977. Included on this album are The Song of Akhenaten Op. 5, and The Water and the Fire, both by Anthony Milner. The Water and the Fire is arguably the climax of Milner’s choral writing, and is widely regarded as a visionary piece. Featured artists on these recordings include soprano Janet Price , soprano Hazel Holt, tenor John Elwes, and baritone Stephen Roberts.

M�ty�s Seiber's body of work is distinguished by a natural versatility, and by the wide range and eclecticism of his musical interests. It incorporates the successful pop song "By the Fountains of Rome" (1956), which hit the Top 10 on the charts; his score for the animated film Animal Farm (1954); and numerous examples of incidental music for radio and television. Born in Budapest on May 4, 1905, M�ty�s Seiber began to learn the cello at the age of ten. He studied composition at the Budapest Academy of Music under Kod�ly from 1919 to 1924, and in 1925 he entered his Serenade for Wind Sextet in a Budapest competition. When it failed to win the prize, Bart�k resigned from the jury in protest! On September 24, 1960 - at the age of 55 - Seiber was killed in a car crash in South Africa during a lecturing tour of the country's universities. At the time of his tragically early death, he was one of the most respected composition teachers in Britain.

Classical Music

There is no finer work in the medium than William Mathias' Harp Concerto, a stunning combination of characterful melody and magical handling of texture. The finale in particular must be counted as one of the most successful concerto movements in the 20th-century literature for any instrument, and this performance featuring the work's dedicatee Osian Ellis is just about perfect in every way. Why this piece isn't a concert staple remains a mystery. The other two works in their individual ways are also very satisfying and well worth hearing, if perhaps not quite as remarkable as the Harp Concerto.

Gervase de Peyer gives a fearless account of the Clarinet Concerto, a piece that vacillates between mellow lyricism and strident outbursts. The thematic material here isn't quite as memorable (to me at least) as that in the Harp and Third Piano Concertos. This latter lives squarely in the school of Bartók and Prokofiev, with a "night music" central movement and a finale that sounds like an amalgam of Bartók's Second, Barber, and Ginastera, albeit with a Welsh musical accent. Peter Katin is the excellent soloist, David Atherton conducts splendidly, and the recording is of the very highest quality. Outstanding and essential for anyone who enjoys really good 20th-century concertos.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

A good specimen of lateral thinking here: at least in as far as it crosses catalogues, years and performers, and comes up with a new combination. Here are three works for voice and orchestra, two choral, one for soloist, written between 1969 and 1974 (though I believe This Worlde's Joie also incorporates two settings from a Cantata in Praise of Love written in 1959). They have a good deal in common yet enough separate identity for them to comprise an acceptably varied programme, the Elegy for a Prince forming a relatively tough and tangy item to be sandwiched in between the choral collections. Of these, Ave Rex is a set of carols, ''Sir Christmas'' being now by far the best known, and This Worlde's Joie a cantata in four movements, nearly 50 minutes long, employing a boys' choir as well as the usual forces of soloists, mixed choir and orchestra.

This, of course, makes us think of Britten, and indeed it is difficult not to think of him, and to a lesser extent Tippett, throughout the disc. In his useful booklet-note, Geraint Lewis acknowledges this but expresses it in terms of ''occasional points of contact and homage'', which is probably excessively diplomatic. We are still, I think, too close to these composers of our time to avoid the word 'derivative': in a few more years it will probably not matter or affect enjoyment, which, irrespective of such questions, is still quite considerable. This Worlde's Joie moves delightfully from one good setting to another, always contriving to unify the structure and work effectively towards climax and contrast. The Prince of the Elegy is Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, killed by English soldiers in 1282: a stern mood prevails, the orchestral writing harder and more austere than the composer's usual style though it yields to some tender expression in the last section.

Sir Geraint Evans, who gave the Elegy's first performance at Llandaff in 1972, sings with authority and dark coloration (for the most part the tessitura is low, rising towards the end and finishing with a sustained soft high E). The soloists in the cantata are excellent and I couldn't help wondering why more was not heard on record of Janet Price. Willcocks and Atherton conduct with vigour and care for detail, and the recordings are admirably clean. In the original review of This Worlde's Joie Trevor Harvey found the words ''not all that clear'', but this seems largely to have been remedied, and indeed one of the best features of Mathias's writing for voices is that he is habitually careful to make the music serve the words and not obscure them.

-- Gramophone [2/1995]

The story of Héloïse and Abelard, ill-starred lovers of the early twelfth century, is universally known, and a mountain of books has been written about them, some scholarly, some largely fictional. In making this libretto the composer has avoided the works of fiction and drawn only on Abelard's Historia Calamitatum in which he tells the tragic story in an open "Letter to a Friend", his letters to Héloïse, and most of all on Héloïse's passionate letters to Abelard. Two of Abelard's Latin Hymns, written at her request for Héloïse and the nuns of the Paraclete, are included; also his Planctus or Lament and a tenth-century love-song, both sung in English, and a popular Latin song for the Students. Héloïse emerges as the stronger and more remarkable character, despite Abelard's eminence as a philosopher, his brilliance and magnetism: students flocked to hear him from all parts. Héloïse herself was a distinguished scholar and later became the renowned Abbess of the Paraclete and founded six daughter houses. She was revered and beloved by everyone. But the Cantata is concerned only with her relationship to Abelard, and ends with his death. The Cantata is in Nine Sections. For those passages sung in Latin an English translation by William Le Fanu is given in the booklet.

Also Available: Lyrita - Celebrating Fifty Years Devoted To British Music - Set One

Set Two has a higher quotient of movements extracted from larger works. This is always an unsatisfactory approach but there was no alternative once Lyrita had chosen to represent composers in this way. Thus we have the finales of the impressive Joubert Symphony and the clean-limbed masculine energy of the Rootham First Symphony. Bewail the fact that Lyrita and Handley never got around to recording Rootham’s Second Symphony - once studio-broadcast by Handley with a BBC Scottish contingent. Rubbra could have been instanced by the cuttingly atmospheric Soliloquy for cello and orchestra but instead we have a movement from his toweringly potent Fourth Symphony which in its cogency and emotional impact overshadows most of the RVW symphonies. Still’s Third Symphony is there too - represented somewhat eccentrically by the originally Saga-produced recording of the outcast Goossens conducting the LSO. Jacob’s wartime First Symphony is also referenced as is Wordsworth’s Third. George Lloyd’s Fourth Symphony - an expiation of horrifying experiences on the Murmansk convoys - is dazzling, surprisingly dance-inflected and sometimes bafflingly good-natured.

The RCM doyens Parry and Stanford are represented by the meaty Brahmsian Symphonic Variations which Boult later re-recorded in 1977 for EMI. Here he is heard with the LSO. The EMI project used his more accustomed partners, the LPO. Stanford is heard in ‘Oirish’ mode with the Irish Rhapsody No.4 - it’s a nice piece but the conductor is Braithwaite not Boult. Outstanding are Jones’s vivacious Dance Fantasy and Lambert’s glorious Music for Orchestra. Look past the John Major-like greyness of the Lambert title and you will find a work of symphonic bearing and memorably moving melodic concentration. I have high hopes that when someone gets to record Cecil Gray’s Syllogism we will find a work of similar attractions hiding behind its academically bleached title. Major works, presented whole, include Leigh’s neo-classical crystal-cut harpsichord Concertino, Rawsthorne’s Symphonic Studies, RVW’s stirring Tallis Fantasia and a stunning display of devastating mastery by Grace Williams - her Ballads for Orchestra. The Williams is on no account to be missed. The Walton Music for Children is intriguing in prospect but ultimately faceless. Bushier-tailed are the Moeran Rhapsody No. 2 from amongst the earliest Lyrita Recorded Edition LPs and the flamboyant Santiago de Espada overture by Malcolm Williamson. Back in time we go to Warlock’s An Old Song - and we must again thank Lyrita for avoiding obvious choices; delightful to hear something off the beaten track rather than another Serenade or Capriol both of which beckoned from the Lyrita coffers. Wind forward to that magician of the impressionist-expressionist genre, Cyril Scott. When Early One Morning was first issued Scott was a very great rarity and the Herrmann-Ogdon partnership was even more exotic even if Bernard Herrmann was a well known Anglophile who conducted Rubbra, Finzi, RVW, Delius and many others. From later generations we hear the Maconchy Music for Strings, which now just fails to engage me, the more attractive Mathias Sinfonietta and at the lighter yet polished end of the spectrum Phyllis Tate’s London Fields suite. Tate is another composer deserving of more recording projects: I recommend her Saxophone Concerto (1944) but there is much more including many works for voice with orchestra or smaller instrumental ensemble.

The documentation for these sets is a joy. Each booklet starts with a two page personal recollection by Edward Greenfield of ‘Lyrita Recorded Edition’ and a three pager by Lewis Foreman: ‘Meeting Richard Itter’. After this comes four pages of photos - some (Braithwaite, Wordsworth) not seen before. The highly detailed track-listing follows this. I only regret that although (p) dates are given there are no dates and locations of recording sessions. Last but not least there are extended yet succinct background notes on each composer and each featured piece. These are by the astute and knowledgeable Paul Conway. Mr Conway has appeared on the Lyrita scene only since 2007 but he has, through his writings, already made himself part of Lyrita’s resplendent achievement.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Lyrita - Celebrating Fifty Years devoted to British Music - Set Two

CD 1 [67:46]
Gordon JACOB Symphony No.1 (I) - LPO/Wordsworth [10:08]
Daniel JONES Dance Fantasy - BBCWSO/Thomson [7:43]
John JOUBERT Symphony No.1 (IV) - LPO/Handley [9:56]
Constant LAMBERT Music for Orchestra - LPO/Wordsworth [13:17]
Walter LEIGH Concertino for Harpsichord and Strings - Trevor Pinnock (harpsichord) - LPO/Braithwaite [9:29]
George LLOYD Symphony No.4 (I) - PO/Downes [17:08]

CD 2 [77:51]
Elizabeth MACONCHY Music for Strings - LPO/Wordsworth [18:23]
William MATHIAS Sinfonietta - NYOW/Davison [13:09]
E. J. MOERAN Rhapsody No.2 - LPO/Boult [13:18]
Hubert PARRY Symphonic Variations - LSO/Boult [12:51]
Alan RAWSTHORNE Symphonic Studies - LPO/Pritchard [20:02]
CD 3 [79:13] Cyril ROOTHAM Symphony in C minor (IV) - LPO/Handley [7:24] Edmund RUBBRA Symphony No.4 (I) - PO/Del Mar [13:04]
Cyril SCOTT Early One Morning - John Ogdon (piano) LPO/Herrmann [14:48]
Charles V. STANFORD Irish Rhapsody No.4 - LPO/Braithwaite [18:52]
Robert STILL Symphony No.3 (II) - LSO/Goossens [11:27]
Phyllis TATE London Fields - LPO/Wordsworth [13:05]

CD 4 [73:04]
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Tallis Fantasia - LPO/Boult [16:16]
William WALTON Music for Children - LPO/Walton [13:15]
Peter WARLOCK An Old Song - LPO/Boult [5:56]
Grace WILLIAMS Ballads for Orchestra - BBCWSO/Handley [17:10]
Malcolm WILLIAMSON Santiago de Espada - RLPO/Groves [6:32]
William WORDSWORTH Symphony No.3 (II) - LPO/Braithwaite [13:46]

rec. 1966-2007. ADD/DDD
LYRITA SRCD.2338 [4 CDs: 67:46 + 77:51 + 79:13 + 73:04]