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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Igor StravinskyRecorded: Royal Festival Hall, London, 10 December 1958
The iconic Igor Stravinsky conducting his own works ‘live’ is a major event, and the 1958 gala event was no exception. ‘Music and Musicians’ wrote “even Stravinsky, apostle of clarity, could not complain of the brilliance of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s attack or clean and faultless line of its phrasing. Seized as it was on this night with a sense of occasion, it can play like a band of angels.” Both the ballet scores, ‘Agon’ and ‘Apollo’ (formerly named ‘Apollon Musagète), were recorded by Stravinsky in the studio after their respective premieres in 1957 and 1950, and then again in the 1960s. The ‘Symphony in 3 Movements’ was first recorded in the studio by Stravinsky in 1946. There are some European air-checks of ‘Agon’ and ‘Apollo’ but the BBC’s own master tapes are of superb quality. Stravinsky concluded the concert with three excerpts from the 1945 ‘Firebird’, but timing only permitted the Finale to be included here. “Having only four rehearsals at his disposal, Stravinsky achieved remarkable results… Although the performance of Agon is hardly pristine, there's a greater sense of rhythmic tension in the performance than the more technically secure studio recording made by the composer...” BBC Music Magazine, June 2009 **** “Agon was then new, and is not the easiest work to play even now...but the performance... generally does its marvellous inventions justice, showing again that annexing serial techniques only made Stravinsky more characteristically and inimitably himself. The BBC strings’ Apollo, if not the most elegant in the world, is warm-hearted and full of life. The end of Firebird, played as an encore, rounds off a truly historic disc.” Sunday Times, 1st March 2009 **** “Their tense astringency is compelling, and the sense of a very special occasion is palpable from the start.” The Guardian, 27th March 2009 “Conducting his own music on a visit to London in 1958, he gives his recently composed ballet music Agon a fiercely angular reading, full of snap and fizz.
The Symphony is given a similarly committed performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though they seem at moments to escape the composer's baton. Only in the neo-classical Apollo is a little lyricism allowed to round the edges” The Telegraph, 18th February 2009 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Joseph Marx - Orchestral Songs and Choral Works
The Austrian composer Joseph Marx was for much of his long career a musical authority of world renown. Within his large output, his songs were amongst his greatest musical achievements, unifying romanticism, impressionism and expressionism with revolutionary results. Many thought him the rightful successor to Hugo Wolf and yet today the name and music of Joseph Marx have fallen into obscurity. The ‘Marx style’ is unmistakable. It is characterised by a highly personal compositional technique displaying a polyphonic harmony of full sonority, allied to masterly contrapuntal skills, and frequent key changes which occur apparently at random but are in fact distributed with utter logic. The music strikes the listener as timeless, refreshingly modern and, above all, surprising, able to exploit tonal means of expression to the full and raise the spirits of every true lover of melody. Chandos’ Record of the Month sees Jirí Belohlávek conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the long overdue premiere of four choral works, along with the first complete recording of Marx’s orchestral songs for soprano, performed by Christine Brewer. Three works are of particular note. Herbstchor an Pan, a single-movement cantata written in 1911, lasts very nearly twenty minutes and was Marx’s first, and for many years only, orchestral composition. It has inexplicably fallen into oblivion in the past five decades. However, it has turned out to be one of the masterpieces of its entire era. Ein Neujahrshymnus (A Hymn for the New Year) is richly orchestrated and demonstrates the profound romantic vein of Joseph Marx; it is here performed for the first time in its orchestral version. This disc represents not only the first recording of Berghymne but also its world premiere performance. We are indebted to the Marx Society for their efforts to promote this composer, and allowing the wider public to hear the outstanding quality of his works. The greatness of the music is indisputable and this recording will make for an important addition to the classical music catalogue. “The luxuriantly recorded Chandos disc is particularly welcome for featuring premiere recordings of four relatively early choral pieces including the lavishly scored Herbstchor an Pan… Performed here with considerable emotional conviction by Jirí Belohlávek and the massed forces of the Trinity Boys Choir and the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, it is by far the most striking of these works... Those drawn to the creamy sonorities of a soprano voice soaring above a lush orchestral fabric will find much to savour in Christine Brewer's warm and ecstatic renditions of 'Barkarole', 'Selige Nacht' and 'Sommerlied'...” BBC Music Magazine, February 2009 **** “Post-Wagnerian richness and lush harmony marks Marx's orchestral songs. Christine Brewer has the floating purity of voice to soar easily over Marx's beautifully judged textures in for instance "Selige Nacht" and "Maienblüten", both rapt in manner and unashamedly reflective, the latter suggesting the atmosphere of Strauss's Four Last Songs.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2009 “The most substantial work in this selection of Joseph Marx's orchestral songs and choral pieces is the Herbstchor an Pan ('Autumn Hymn to Pan'), his first orchestral work (1911) but one in which his easy mastery of a rich instrumental palette is already evident. His idiom was formed early and changed little: indeed, he had little sympathy with change, and notoriously failed to mention Schoenberg, Berg or even Hindemith when he brought out Weltsprache Musik, a book of aesthetics and philosophy, in the last year of his life, 1964.
It should be no surprise, then, to find that here is a rich, post-Wagnerian manner, luscious in harmony and sensuous in orchestration. Christine Brewer has the floating purity of voice to soar easily over Marx's beautifully judged textures in, for instance Selige Nacht and Maienblüten, both rapt in manner and unashamedly reflective, the latter suggesting the atmosphere of Strauss's Four Last Songs. Some similarity betwen Marx and Delius suggests that they had both moved away from Wagnerian harmony in comparable directions, influenced by a pantheistic response to nature: lovers of Delius's SeaDrift may appreciate the harmonic flavour and modulatory side-slips of the Herbstchor an Pan. It is in this vein that Marx seems at his most effective; the more exuberant songs sound rather laboured and their jollity contrived. Belohlávek draws a suitably rich manner from the orchestra and gives Brewer loyal support with textures that are full but always lucid, and served well by the recording.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps
If for many British music students in the early 1960s, modern music ended with Bartók and the neo-classical Stravinsky, the two recordings on this CD disc helped to change all that. Roger Nichols’s note goes on to relate: ‘The story behind the quartet has often been told: its composition in a wash-house in a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia in 1940, its first performance on 15 January 1941 before an audience of 400 fellow prisoners with a piano whose keys kept sticking, and the audience’s response to the work’s life-affirming properties – “I was never listened to”, the composer said later, “with such attention and understanding”.’ The work treats of ‘the abolition of time itself, something infinitely mysterious and incomprehensible to most philosophers of time, from Plato to Bergson’. In this great recording from 1968, Nichols singles out Gervase de Peyer as supremely equal to his starring role: ‘surely no clarinettist has yet matched his “désolé” tone and phrasing at the start of the third movement solo’. The substantial coupling is the far less accessible Chronochromie, recorded in 1964 and written just four years earlier. This came about through a subvention from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and had the further benefit that Antal Dorati had conducted the work’s stormy Paris première in 1962. Here the BBC SO respond to the considerable challenges with playing of remarkable accuracy, energy and colour: as Nichols says, with repeated listening, the work’s difficulties become beauties. Again, both works are newly transferred and remastered to ART standard at Abbey Road Studios. “Béroff invests Messiaen's piano writing with subtlety, and displays an acute sensitivity to the exotic harmonies. With responsive support from the other performers, this is a moving interpretation of a classic.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2009 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Foerster - Violin Concertos
The Times called it a “superbly played concert:” Ivan Ženatý and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jirí Belohlavek performed Foerster’s first violin concerto at London’s Barbican Hall in December, 2007. The concerto was written at the urging of Czech violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík, the dedicatee of the work, and the soloist who premiered it in Chicago in 1910. The second concerto, recorded in the studio, is a somewhat neglected part of the solo repertoire, not being a work for the presentation of superficial violin virtuosity. Ženatý, however, succeeds in delving beneath the piece’s surface and uncovering its introverted beauty for the audience. Thus these pieces appear together for the first time ever on this album, produced in cooperation with BBC Radio 3. The combination of Foerster’s music with a soloist and conductor of this calibre could be called a truly fortunate constellation. Belohlávek is a conductor of worldwide reknown whose years of musical activity have earned him the position of a specialist in the Czech symphonic and operatic repertoire. Under his guidance, the London orchestra rings with the tones, colors and ardor traditionally associated with Czech ensembles, while Ženatý’s playing is characterized as always by passion and virtuosity in the service of the composition. The unique first recording of Foerster’s complete violin concertos in a spectacular performance by Ivan Ženatý and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jirí Belohlávek. “Full marks to Ivan Ženatý and Jirí Belohlávek for bringing these fascinating works to public attention.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 **** “If [Foerster's] melodies are not intrinsically memorable, these finely wrought concertos get ideally idiomatic, rhapsodic performances from Zenaty and the BBCSO under Belohlavek.” Sunday Times, 17th August 2008 *** “[The Violin Concertos] are intensely lyrical works, mostly conventional in form but gorgeously expansive in the best of their melodic writing. The performances seem beautifully judged, and the soloist Ivan Zenaty has the perfect pure-toned expressiveness the music needs.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5th September 2008 *** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“Fine things here, but Hough is too rhapsodic and unstable, and in the huge first movement momentum and structure disappear.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2008 ** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Craig Armstrong - Memory Takes My Hand
Armstrong, C: | One Minute, 15 pieces for orchestra ‘One Minute’ is a work composed of 15 one-minute pieces for orchestra, each minute functioning as a self-contained piece. It was commissioned by the Horse Cross Trust for the opening of the new Concert Hall in Perth. Immer (Violin Concerto No. 1) ‘Immer’, his Violin Concerto No. 1, was composed in 2007 for Clio Gould (today principal violin of the London Sinfonietta), with whom Craig Armstrong collaborated when she was artistic director to the Scottish Ensemble. She is regularly involved in the performance of contemporary solo repertoire. In ‘Immer’ Armstrong creates a specific acoustic sonority with techniques found in contemporary music software, using slow loops that phase in and out with one another, creating a blurred tonality, with the solo violin singing above the orchestra - a technique which also has its roots in early music; repetition, canons, fugues etc. Clio Gould (violin) Memory Takes My Hand ‘Memory Takes My Hand’ was a commission from the Glasgow City Council to write a new concert work for the reopening of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in October 2006. Craig Armstrong collaborated with the playwright Peter Arnott for the words, in this work sung by the British soprano Lucy Crowe. Lucy Crowe (soprano) Apollo Singers |
"I wanted to find a direct language using tonality but being firmly routed in the 21st century. An abstract defuse way of writing much like the way an abstract painting where the images are blurred. And in this case melodies are hidden and slowly revealed. I have always had a fascination with sonority and orchestration in much a similar way in the way a painter deals with the subtle nuances of colour." Craig Armstrong “An eloquent soloist and Scottish places and memories inspire this fine music. Film composer Craig Armstrong's music was inspired in part by the playing of Gould whose eloquent account should ensure the work further performances.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2008 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Gilbert & Sullivan - Iolanthe & Overture do Ballo
Sullivan, A: | Iolanthe The Lord Chancellor - George Baker,
The Earl of Mountararat - Ian Wallace,
Earl Tolloller - Alexander Young,
Private Willis - Owen Brannigan,
Strephon - James Cameron,
Queen of the Fairies - Monica Sinclair,
Iolanthe - Marjorie Thomas,
Celia - April Cantelo,
Leila - Heather Harper,
Phyllis - Elsie Morison Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Pro Arte Orchestra Overture di Ballo BBC Symphony Orchestra |
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| |  | Paul Tortelier
Recorded: Royal Festival Hall, London, 14 November 1972 (Elgar), Royal Festival Hall, London, 17 April 1974 (Brahms), BBC Studios, 10 February 1959 (Debussy) “This generous collection of three favourite works provides a fine portrait of the great French cellist Paul Tortelier at the height of his career in the post-war period. It is specially valuable to have his view of the Elgar Cello Concerto, which he recorded commercially at least three times. Here it comes in a live recording which gives an even warmer, more spontaneoussounding view of the piece in his distinctive interpretation.
Tortelier strongly believed that Elgar's markings should not be exaggerated, in particular the marking tenuto, at which many interpreters bring the music practically to a halt. In the second- movement Scherzo, for example, the drawing out of the tempo in two key places is markedly less here than in most rival readings.
Tortelier also felt that the portamento slides should be kept to a minimum in the first movement, something he was able to achieve thanks to his very large hands. Even so, there is no lack of warmth in the dedicated slow movement or the meditative epilogue, which are given their full emotional weight.
The performance of Brahms's Double Concerto has similar qualities, and is important too for demonstrating what a fine violinist Tortelier's son Yan Pascal is. The bright purity of his violin tone contrasts illuminatingly with the richness of his father's cello tone.
The performance of the Debussy Sonata dates from much earlier, a 1959 studio recording, which yet brings out the natural spontaneity with which Tortelier tackled this improvisational work with its many stops and starts.
Recording quality is generally good, though in the Elgar the audience is irritatingly bronchial at times.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “…a fine portrait of the great French cellist Paul Tortelier at the height of his career…[His]personality is stamped on every bar of these live performances...It is specially valuable to have his view of the Elgar Cello Concerto…in a live recording which gives an even warmer, more spontaneous-sounding view of the piece in his distinctive interpretation.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2008 | | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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“This notoriously difficult yet majestic concerto is the perfect vehicle to show off the considerable talents of dazzling French pianist Cedric Tiberghien, who tackles it with a combination of effortless virtuosity and maturity beyond his years.
Partnered with the BBC Symphony and new chief conductor Jiri Belohlavek, Tiberghien is equally at home in the light, contemplative passages, the stormy superstructure and the joyous final movement. The orchestra completes its
programme with a spirited rendering of Brahms's Haydn Variations.” The Observer “few recordings in recent years have matched the emotional intensity and drama that Tiberghien and Belohlavek bring to this masterpiece.” Classic FM Magazine “The French pianist Cédric Tiberghien, now 32, has climbed to prominence slowly, gathering competition prizes, a Harmonia Mundi recording contract and four CD recital discs of core repertoire from Bach to Debussy. He's no flashy virtuoso: one Lang Lang is enough. But he's refreshingly individual, sensitive, strong-minded, intelligent; more than a name to watch.” The Times “The recording spotlights the piano so that Tiberghien's every note can be heard and pondered, and he never gives the impression of irresponsibility or excessive calculation. But everything is so shaped and rationally conceived that this powerful work never quite achieves its usual impact...” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Vaughan WilliamsAnniversary Collectors Edition
“Massachusetts-born George Maran's 1955 Decca recording of On Wenlock Edge… an uncommonly sensitive and intimate rendering… there's no disputing the intoxicating spell cast by dedicatee Sir Henry Wood's October 1938 Columbia recording of the sublime Serenade to Music.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2008 “The sole CD premiere is the 1955 On Wenlock Edge by George Maran, a German-based American tenor - pleasant-toned enough but distinctly previous in enunciation, no match for Pears/Britten, or more recent versions.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2008 *** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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