Philip Fowke

Produced by EMI Classics in partnership with the prestigious National Gallery in London, The National Gallery Collection is a budget-price catalogue series bringing together the very best in fine art and classical music.

The collection features a selection of classical masterworks in celebrated recordings from the EMI Classics catalogue, brought together with great artworks from The National Gallery’s permanent collection.

Paul Dukas (1865-1935) was extremely critical of his own work and destroyed a great deal. This accounts for the fact that he left a remarkably small catalogue of works. Aside from the incredibly popular Sorcerer's Apprentice most of his work remains relatively little-known to the majority of music lovers. The Symphony in C is a particularly fine work that will appeal to anyone familar with the symphonies of Franck, Chausson and d'Indy, and the Piano Sonata is a substantial work that rewards repeated listening. La Péri of 1912 was Dukas' last major work; for the remainder of his life he remained, like Sibelius, almost silent as a composer, concentrating on his work as a composition teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. It was at the Conservatoire that his pupils included a new generation of 20th century composers, among them Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Jean Langlais, Carlos Chavez and Joaquín Rodrigo.

The Prince Consort’s exciting and innovative new recording embraces two contrasting composers: Johannes Brahms and Stephen Hough including the premiere recording of the British pianist and composer Stephen Hough’s collection: ‘Other Love Songs’.

Commissioned by the Consort in 2009 to complement Brahms’ works, Hough’s songs are designed to explore other kinds of love. This is symbolised in the rather unique accompaniment of three hands, with Hough providing the third hand.

Brahms’ collection of love songs, ‘Liebeslieder Waltzen’, written for vocal quartet and piano duet (Alisdair Hogarth with Philip Fowke), depicts the love between a man and a woman – at first cheerful and lustful, then as the mood darkens, heartbreaking and obsessive. The Prince Consort’s debut recording received great critical acclaim; named ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone, ‘IRR Outstanding’ in International Record Review and BBC Music Magazine called it “an outstanding recording”.

‘The Prince Consort is rapidly establishing itself as one of the UK’s leading chamber ensembles renowned for its inspired and vibrant approach to repertoire and performance.

Stephen Hough, in addition to being a multi-award winning recording artist and concert pianist, is an avid composer and regularly contributes articles to the Guardian and Telegraph.

Recently located live recordings of the 1987 & 1988 Husum Piano festival, are now released for the first time on CD at two for the price of one. Not to missed by any piano lover!

Alun Hoddinott was born in Bargoed, Glamorganshire, South Wales. He showed musical aptitude young, beginning violin lessons at the age of four, later becoming a founder-member (playing the viola) of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He won a composition scholarship to the University College of South Wales at sixteen. Hoddinott began composing as a boy, but withdrew most of his early works, including some that had already been performed and broadcast. His sequence of symphonies has been seen as the centre of his achievement, but his concertos are hardly less important. By the time of his Third Symphony, completed when he was forty, he had written thirteen concertante works, for a wide range of solo instruments and scorings. The early concertos for oboe and for clarinet are with strings only, the First Piano Concerto uses wind and percussion without strings, the Organ Concerto a large orchestra particularly rich in percussion …