Anthony Payne: Phoenix Mass

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If you only know Anthony Payne through his excellent realisation of Elgar's Third Symphony, his own music may come as a surprise, especially the early works on this disc...[The World's Winter]... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2013, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 20th May 2013
Catalogue No: NMCD159
Label: NMC
Length: 62 minutes

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Payne: Phoenix Mass

Work length26:58

Album only

$5.20

BBC Singers, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble
John Poole

Kyrie

Track length2:15

$1.00

$1.30

Gloria

Track length16:24

Album only

$1.30

Sanctus

Track length3:32

$1.00

$1.30

Agnus Dei

Track length4:47

$1.00

$1.30

Payne: Paean

Work length11:40

$2.00

$2.60

Susan Bradshaw

Toccata

Track length6:40

$1.00

$1.30

Aria

Track length5:00

$1.00

$1.30

Payne: Paean

Work length4:23

$1.00

$1.30

Susan Bradshaw

Payne: The World’s Winter

Work length10:37

$2.00

$3.90

Jane Manning
The Nash Ensemble
Lionel Friend

I. Nothing Will Die

Track length3:56

$1.00

$1.30

II. All Things Will Die

Track length6:41

$1.00

$2.60

Payne: Horn Trio

Work length9:08

$1.50

$5.15

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About

Composer, writer, lecturer and broadcaster Anthony Payne was born in London and educated at Dulwich College and Durham University.

His completion of Elgar’s Third Symphony in 1997 brought him worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, including the Elgar Medal and awards from the South Bank Show and Evening Standard as well as the New York Critics’ Circle. Its premiere recording on NMC is still our best-selling recording (NMCD053).

Commissions include four major premieres at the BBC Proms and works for the BBC Philharmonic and London Sinfonietta. He has won British Composer Awards for his orchestral piece Visions and Journeys and his Second String Quartet, commissioned by the Allegri Quartet.

His orchestrations include a suite of Warlock songs, Elgar’s Crown of India, and Vaughan Williams’s Four Last Songs.

Phoenix Mass, written in 1965, was originally to have been a liturgical setting only for school choir but soon turned into something much bigger and more technically demanding. As Anthony Payne elaborated the project he experienced what he recalled as ‘the natural emergence of a new manner – long sought but previously only partly envisaged’ and despite the Medieval and Baroque connotations of its techniques and scoring, and a few passing resemblances to Britten and Maxwell Davies, this is the earliest of Payne’s acknowledged works that reveals a completely integrated musical character of its own.

Also on this recording is the Horn Trio, a piece symbolising marital harmony, written in 2006; The World's Winter (1976) for soprano and piano, setting two early poems of Tennyson – Nothing Will Die and All Things Will Die and Paean (1971) for solo piano.

Phoenix Mass, Paean and The World’s Winter have been transferred from LP in the absence of the original masters. The Horn Trio was recorded live for BBC Radio 3.

Reviews

October 2013

If you only know Anthony Payne through his excellent realisation of Elgar's Third Symphony, his own music may come as a surprise, especially the early works on this disc...[The World's Winter] is riveting...The gorgeous Horn Trio from 2006 completes a fascinating collection.

21st April 2013

Payne’s English Romantic affinities (expressed in his realisation of Elgar sketches) are less evident in this enjoyable sequence of mostly early works than a brand of keen-edged postwar modernism.

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