London Philharmonic Orchestra

Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London on 7 & 8 March 2012.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra takes part in the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June as part of the 1000 boat flotilla celebrating the Queen’s 60th anniversary. Its musicians will play works chosen for their association with British history and London landmarks, recorded here to capture the spirit of the occasion and to serve as a memento of a unique day.

Highlights of the music include Percy Grainger’s Country Gardens, Jupiter from Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Thomas Arne’s Rule, Britannia!, the James Bond Theme, The Dam Busters by Eric Coates and two works by Elgar – Nimrod from Enigma Variations and Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1. The CD closes out with a performance of the National Anthem.

First conducted in Weimar in 1893 by Richard Strauss, Hänsel und Gretel had immediate worldwide success, the Hamburg premiere in 1894 conducted by Gustav Mahler. In its first year, over 50 German theatres staged a production and it has been translated into over 20 languages. In the UK it was the first complete opera to ever be broadcast from Covent Garden back in 1923, and was a staple in the opera repertory until the 1950s where it fell into a black hole. Here Hänsel und Gretel remained until Glyndebourne’s new production in 2008. This recording comes from the re-staging in 2010.

This recording boasts a fine cast, with Alice Coote a seasoned Hänsel having also performed in the role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Lydia Teuscher making a notable UK debut as Gretel with Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s beautiful portrayal of the Witch stealing the show. Robin Ticciati, Glyndebourne’s new Artistic Director from 2013, clearly loves the piece: his conducting is nothing short of wonderful, with the performance from the London Philharmonic Orchestra a real highlight on this recording.

Legendary composer and sitarist Ravi Shankar is one of India’s most highly esteemed musical ambassadors, renowned for his pioneering work in bringing Indian music to the West. 2010 saw the première of his ambitious fusion work, his first symphony conceived for a Western symphony orchestra, which translates the aural sensibilities and sound-worlds of Indian music into a Western structural framework. In this live recording of the work’s première, David Murphy conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Ravi Shankar’s daughter Anoushka on sitar.

Ravi Shankar travelled a great deal in the West as a child dancer in his elder brother Uday Shankar’s troupe of Indian musicians and dancers. During a long sojourn in Paris in the early 1930s he met many of the legends of Western classical music: George Enescu, the great Romanian violinist and composer who was then teaching the teenage Menuhin in Paris. Toscanini, Heifetz, Paderewski, Casals, Kreisler and the great Russian bass Chaliapin were some of the musical legends who made an impact on the young Ravi Shankar.

He also experienced the reaction of Westerners to hearing Indian music for the first time. He noticed that the Western ear is attuned to harmony, modulation and counterpoint: musical textures which of necessity are almost entirely absent in Indian music in order to maintain the melodic purity of the raga. He realised Western-trained ears needed an awareness of the rhythmic and melodic structures underpinning Indian music in order to appreciate it.

Thus in later years, Ravi Shankar became the first Indian musician to explain these concepts to his audiences. Through Ravi Shankar, Indian music began to have an influence on most genres of Western music: Yehudi Menuhin became a duo partner and George Harrison was another Western musician for whom the music of India resonated deeply. Harrison became a devoted student and lifelong friend, thus the influence of Indian music reached out to a whole generation.