BBC Philharmonic

Edward Gregson - Concertos

Edward Gregson is one of Britain’s most versatile composers, whose music has been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. A noted conductor of contemporary music, he has also held numerous academic posts. He retires as Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music at the end of this academic term. Gregson’s life-long fascination for the concerto form began early but having been brought up in a Salvationist family it was inevitable that the brilliant sound of the British brass band should play an important role in the early years of his composing career. This led to a parallel universe of musical experiences. ‘On the one hand I was playing music by some fine brass band composers and on the other being absorbed in the music of Bartok, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Webern, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Tippett and others.’ This musical landscape greatly influences his compositional style to this day. ‘…my concertos use musical reference or homage, as a backbone to the work. Each uses the idea of musical tribute in a different way.’ The Concerto for Piano and Wind and Saxophone Concerto, in particular, pay tribute to those composers whose concertos Gregson loved when he was a teenager. In the slow movement of the Saxophone Concerto Gregson actually quotes the opening of the Berg Violin Concerto, ‘mainly because my own musical fabric in that movement is built on a twelve-note row with a strong reference to major and minor thirds. In my Trumpet Concerto, the slow movement uses Shostakovich’s musical cipher DSCH as the main reference point to what is an In Memoriam to the Russian master who had died not long before I started writing the work.’

Saxophone Concertos

Nobuya Sugawa is one of the most distinguished wind instrumentalists in Japan. He is joined here by the BBC Philharmonic under Yutaka Sado to perform works by Yoshimatsu and Honda, both of which are dedicated to him. He also plays works by Ibert and Larsson which are firmly established in the saxophone’s concert repertoire. Sugawa performs in Japan and throughout the world and over the years has received numerous prizes and awards. Takashi Yoshimatsu, who has a long-term association with Chandos, in 1994 wrote a concerto for Sugawa titled Cyber-bird, a piece which utilises all the functions of the saxophone, and fuses classical, ethnic and jazz styles. When Sugawa approached Yoshimatsu for a new concerto, the composer declined, saying, ‘I can’t compose a new work that surpasses the last one’. Yet, when the idea of a soprano saxophone concerto was mentioned, he writes, ‘I thought, maybe I can compose a concerto for the soprano sax that highlights “calm”, in contrast to the “motion” characteristic of Cyber-bird, and so I started to structure a new work’. The ‘Albireo’ of the title is the name of the double Beta star that sits at the beak of the constellation Cygnus. These two stars shine respectively bright goldenyellow like a topaz and bluish-green like a sapphire. Yoshimatsu continues, ‘Albireo Mode symbolises the character of the soprano sax, which is two-fold, combining both coolness and heat, both beauty and depth. That is why I named the cool and beautiful first part “Topaz” and the hot and deep second part “Sapphire”’. The work was premiered by Sugawa in 2005 at the Symphony Hall in Osaka. Toshiyuki Honda began his professional career as a saxophonist. He writes of the connection between Sugawa and the Concerto du vent, ‘Nobuya Sugawa, a saxophone player like me and a friend whom I respect very much, entrusted me with the task of writing a concerto for him, a concerto that would represent a tribute to jazz. People tend to associate jazz with ad lib and rhythm and blues, but we took a slightly different direction… It was a great honour to be able to record with the BBC Philharmonic and Nobuya Sugawa… “Vent” is the French word for wind. Please think of the Concerto du vent as a Concerto of the wind’. Completing the recording are Ibert’s Concertino da camera, one of the best-known works for alto saxophone, by a composer Yutaka Sado has conducted on many occasions, and Larsson’s popular Concerto for Saxophone and String Orchestra.

Bax - Tone Poems Volume 2

For Bax there were several periods of intense creativity when he committed to paper a variety of works in the form of piano scores, and orchestrated them when required. Many of the tone poems performed here were conceived in this fashion, including Red Autumn, which here receives its premiere recording. Originally a solo piano piece, it was then arranged for two pianos by Bax himself. In 2006 the Sir Arnold Bax Trust commissioned Graham Parlett to orchestrate the work in Bax’s early period style specifically for this recording. Heard in its orchestral dress it immediately reveals its family resemblance to the tone poems Nympholept and November Woods, composed round the same time. Vernon Handley brings together for the first time three orchestral movements to which the collective title ‘Three Northern Ballads’ has been given. They date from the late 1920s and early 1930s, breathe much the same atmosphere, and Handley is keen to promote them as forming a unified, almost symphonic, whole. The first, which Bax composed and gave the name ‘Northern Ballad’ in 1927, was followed by a second Ballad, orchestrated in 1931. The third, formally entitled Prelude for a Solemn Occasion, appears to evoke a Sibelian musical landscape, and occupies the same world as the composer’s Sixth Symphony, which followed almost immediately. When Bax orchestrated the third piece he was taking his usual winter sojourn at Morar, Inverness-shire, and in a letter to a friend wrote, ‘It suggests an atmosphere of the dark north and perhaps dark happenings among the mists’. The nature painting in the work certainly calls to mind the wilds of Scotland. Joining this quasi-symphonic work, in addition to Red Autumn, are three further early tone poems. Into the Twilight dates from Bax’s first intensive period of composition, the years immediately preceding World War I, and originated as the prelude to a planned Irish opera, Deirdre. It received only one performance during Bax’s lifetime, in 1909, conducted by Thomas Beecham. Nympholept which followed was the work in which Bax fully achieved the impressionistic technique of his first maturity. It suggests the pagan natural world in which Bax was so deeply interested. The Happy Forest, follows a pastoral short story by Herbert Farjeon, and is an Arcadian evocation much like Nympholept. It was first performed in 1923 under Eugene Goossens, its dedicatee.

Bainton - Orchestral Works

The earliest work recorded here, The Golden River, is taken from the Newcastle years and takes its inspiration from the short story by John Ruskin. The original version was completed in 1908 before being completely revised and a new third movement added in June 1912 – the version you hear on this recording. Last performed in 1913; this is the first time it has been heard in over 90 years. In 1914 while en route to the Bayreuth Festival, Bainton was apprehended as a British civilian in wartime Germany and interned for the next four years in Ruhleben Camp near Berlin. He was placed in charge of music-making at the camp and became acquainted with a number of other musicians, including Ernest MacMillan and cellist Carl Fuchs. Despite many hardships this four-year exile proved to be a period of great creativity, resulting in Three Pieces for Orchestra and a piano concerto, his Concerto Fantasia, which he completed in 1920, and was awarded a Carnegie Prize. Bainton’s approach to Concerto Fantasia is original, (although possibly sparked on hearing Busoni’s Piano Concerto in 1909) the ‘Fantasia’ element being created by the opening cadenza which continually re-appears at various stages of the work and an integral part of the thematic material. At a performance given in Birmingham in 1921, with Bainton as soloist, the critic Alfred Sheldon wrote “… the event introduced to Birmingham the most considerable contribution to the repertory of music for piano in combination with orchestra we have had from a composer for many years.” Here the work is performed by Margaret Fingerhut, who has an extensive discography with Chandos. In a recent review she was described as “an accomplished and stylish advocate” (BBC Music Magazine). Completing the repertoire is Bainton’s only published orchestral work, the poignantly Pavane, Idyll and Bacchanal. All premiere recordings

Kapp - Orchestral Works

Rachmaninov: Francesca da Rimini

The Film Music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Volume 2

Smetana - Orchestral Works Volume 1

Daniel Jones - Symphonies Nos. 4, 7 & 8