Future Releases

This is the third volume in our survey of orchestral works by Alfredo Casella, which forms part of the ongoing Italian Music series with the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda. Both the two previous volumes have been very well received by reviewers and the buying public alike, with David A. McConnell of MusicWeb International commenting: ‘I am once again dumbstruck by how engaging and wonderful this music is. The orchestra plays its collective heart out, and the Chandos recording is stunning in its realism and impact.’

Casella was a fervent Italian patriot, as his Symphonic Rhapsody Italia so aptly demonstrates. In this one-movement work, the composer focuses on just two contrasting destinations in Italy: Sicily – impoverished, sun scorched, and superstitious; and Naples – bustling and carefree. Like Richard Strauss before him, in Aus Italien of 1886, Casella makes clever use of folk tunes, which he found in Favara’s Canti della terra e del mare di Sicilia. Unlike Strauss, though, Casella knew that Funiculì funiculà was not in fact a true folksong, but rather the work of the composer Luigi Denza, and in acknowledging this managed to avoid the copyright troubles that Strauss got into over its usage.

It was through his admiration for Stravinsky that Casella later found neoclassicism, a style which is strongly evident in the driving rhythms, tunefulness, and colourful orchestration of the third Symphony. The work was commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and it premiered to great acclaim in March 1941. Later it took Dresden and Vienna by storm, where it was conducted by the composer himself and Wilhelm Furtwängler, respectively.

Stravinsky’s influence is present also in the final work on this disc: Introduzione, Corale e Marcia for large orchestral forces. Structurally it may derive from César Franck’s Prélude, choral et fugue and Prélude, aria et final, but Stravinsky is there too, in the stylistic inspiration for the main theme of the Introduzione in particular, and also within the melodic material and tempo changes in the concluding Marcia.

This is Volume 1 in a new chamber series which explores the music of composers who were forced to flee Europe during the 1930s. The survey begins with works by the German-born Jewish composer Paul Ben-Haim (né Frankenburger) who immigrated to Palestine in October 1933. Ben-Haim was an accomplished pianist, conductor, choral coach, and composer who made a significant cultural contribution to his adoptive country. The list of musicians who commissioned, performed, and recorded his music includes Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, Menahem Pressler, and Leonard Bernstein. Among the Israeli composers he taught are Eliahu Inbal, Avraham Sternklar, Noam Sheriff, and Shulamit Ran.

The Piano Quartet was completed in Munich during the summer of 1921, long before any thought of emigration. Until the ARC Ensemble’s performance of the work in 2012, it had not been played since a broadcast in July 1932. It it strongly rooted in the music of Brahms, Strauss, Reger, and Fauré, whilst retaining Ben-Haim’s own strength of ideas, sense of form, and bold, confident use of colour.

By the late 1930s / early 1940s, Ben-Haim’s musical language had adapted to life in Palestine, and we find strong Hebraic elements scattered throughout both the Two Landscapes and Improvisation and Dance. The ‘Canzonetta’ is the fourth of the composer’s Five Pieces for Piano, and a direct descendent of the nineteenth century’s Song without Words.

The amalgamation of Eastern and Western influences in Ben-Haim’s life are beautifully realised in the Clarinet Quintet. While the European technique originates in the two mainstays of the clarinet’s chamber repertoire, the quintets by Brahms and Mozart, the ‘Capriccio’ in the Scherzo is a complete quotation of ‘Elohei Tzidki’ (God of my righteousness), a traditional hymn. ‘I was very satisfied,’ wrote the composer, ‘because I felt that I had succeeded in consolidating a new style.’

Over the last ten years the ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory, Toronto) has become one of Canada’s pre-eminent cultural ambassadors, raising international appreciation of The Royal Conservatory and Canada’s rich musical life. Its first two CDs, On the Threshold of Hope and Right through the Bone (devoted respectively to the music of Mieczysław Weinberg and Julius Röntgen), were both nominated for Grammy Awards in the ‘Best Chamber Music Recording’ category. Its recordings enjoy regular airplay around the world, and its concerts have been broadcast on CBC Radio, National Public Radio in the US, and on public radio throughout Europe.

Enjoying a flourishing career that has taken her to every continent and major orchestra around the world, the violinist and exclusive Chandos artist Tasmin Little continues to champion seldom-performed repertoire. This disc marks the beginning of her new survey of British violin sonatas with the pianist Piers Lane.

As a composer, Howard Ferguson had a preoccupation with technical finesse, which meant that he was a slow and meticulous composer. He produced only twenty works before he decided to abandon composition altogether in 1959, as a result of his lack of sympathy with the modernist trends of the day. Ferguson wrote his Violin Sonata No. 2 for the Israeli violinist Yfrah Neaman. The sense of anxiety that is portrayed throughout is highly characteristic of the works by this composer, as is the intensely economical motivic workings.

William Walton wrote his Violin Sonata as a gesture of gratitude to Yehudi Menuhin for having lent him 1000 Swiss Francs to pay for medical treatment for his partner at the time, Alice Wimborne, who had fallen ill while they were in Lucerne. The sonata is unusual in its two-movement format. Both movements are substantial, and this may explain why Walton dropped the two-minute Scherzetto which he originally had sandwiched between them. The Scherzetto was later published separately as one of the Two Pieces for Violin and Piano, the other being a Canzonetta based on a mediaeval troubadour theme. The Two Pieces were dedicated to Vivien Leigh and her husband, Laurence Olivier.

Long before Benjamin Britten became famous as an opera composer, his aptitude for composition was evident in a series of early instrumental works marked by their technical brilliance, few more virtuosic than his Suite, Op. 6. While this is true, Britten himself seemed undecided about the structure of this work, which went through numerous reconsiderations, the last of which he prepared just eight months before his death.

Tasmin Little is an Ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, President of the European String Teachers’ Association, and a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has further received Honorary Degrees from the universities of Bradford, Leicester, Hertfordshire, and the City of London. In great demand as a chamber musician, Piers Lane has given sold-out recitals at the Wigmore Hall, London, and the opening recital at the new Melbourne Recital Centre; he has long-standing partnerships with Tasmin Little, the soprano Cheryl Barker, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright, and violist and composer Brett Dean.

Britten’s substantial choral output ranges from small-scale pieces for boys’ choir to massive works such as the Spring Symphony and War Requiem. This three-disc compilation brings together a large selection of early and late unaccompanied choral works, performed by The Finzi Singers under Paul Spicer.

Here, among many others, is Rejoice in the Lamb, written in 1943 for Walter Hussey, the vicar of St Matthew’s Church in Northampton, for his congregation’s Jubilee Celebrations. Hussey was interested in forging a closer association between the arts and the Church, an aim that Britten himself shared. The composer chose as his text extracts from Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, a rambling poem of the mid-eighteenth century, composed largely in a mad house. Although there is a delightful sense of madness present here, the religious character of the work is the most striking.

A.M.D.G., seven unaccompanied settings of poems by Gerald Manley Hopkins, was among the first works written by Britten after his arrival in the US in 1939. The work’s title is an abbreviation of Ad majorem Dei gloriam (To the greater glory of God), a saying that appears throughout the writings of Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order of which Hopkins was a member. The premiere performance of this work was meant to take place in November 1939, but the outbreak of war caused the concert to be cancelled. The first performance was given by the London Sinfonietta Chorus, several years after the composer’s death, in August 1984.

This re-release is available on the Classic Chandos label at 3 CDs for the price of 2. The Finzi Singers and Paul Spicer have recorded a wide variety of British music for Chandos, much of which has not been heard before either in performance or on disc. They have been regarded as major exponents of British twentieth-century choral music.

York Bowen has been described as ‘The English Rachmaninoff’. As a young composer he was highly regarded by the most admired performers of the day, including Hans Richter, Fritz Kreisler, and Lionel Tertis. Bowen composed more than 160 works, which show a blend of romanticism and strong individuality. This collection ranges widely over his output for solo piano, from relatively large-scale structures to quite short, almost miniature, pieces.

Evident in these works is Bowen’s responsiveness to two very different national schools: the Russian, with its often epic character, its pianistic virtuosity, strong rhythmical impact, and darkly atmospheric, melancholic harmonies and melodies, and the French, generally distinguished by its lightness, its playfully decorated melodies, and tender harmonies. Among the composers whose piano music left a mark on Bowen’s own works for the instrument are Rachmaninoff, Balakirev, Medtner, Scriabin, Debussy, and even sometimes Ravel. Echoes of the music of Ireland, Delius, Elgar, and Vaughan Williams may, however, also be heard in Bowen’s work. It is this fusion of different styles which makes Bowen’s own very individual sound world so remarkable.

The Dutch pianist Joop Celis has given lecture recitals on the piano works of York Bowen for the Dutch and Belgian branches of the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA), and in 2005 he gave master-classes, lectures, and recitals both in South Korea and China, performing piano works by Bowen.

Josephslegende by Richard Strauss is based on the Biblical tale of the adventures of Joseph in Egypt after he has been sold into slavery by his brothers. Strauss started the work in June 1912. However, in a letter of 11 September, he confided that ‘Joseph isn’t progressing as quickly as I expected. The chaste Joseph himself isn’t at all up my street, and if a thing bores me I find it difficult to set it to music. This God-seeker Joseph – he’s going to be a hell of an effort!’ Quite characteristic for Strauss, he showed far more interest in the sexual elements of the story, in which Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph and ends up committing suicide. The ballet was premiered at the Paris Opéra in May 1914, where it was presented as part of a triple bill alongside danced interpretations of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and Schumann’s Papillons.

Strauss’s opera Feuersnot (Trial by Fire) has been interpreted as a parody of Richard Wagner’s idea of ‘redemption through love’. The opera takes place during the Midsummer Festival, where lovers swear their fidelity by leaping through the flames of a bonfire. In the story, the main character, Kunrad, is attracted to Diemut, a young girl who rejects his advances, with dire consequences. In retaliation, he persuades a sorcerer to extinguish all the fires in the town, stating that the only way to restore them is via ‘the body of a virgin in heat’. The opera concludes with the Love Scene, recorded here, in which Diemut sacrifices her virginity to Kunrad in order to release the spell on the fires. At the time of its premiere in 1901, the strong sexual theme was quite disturbing to its audiences.

Also on this disc is the Festmarsch, Op. 1, his first published orchestral work, which Strauss wrote at the tender age of twelve. Five years later he approached the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel who initially refused to take it on. Only when the work’s dedicatee, Strauss’s uncle Georg Pschorr, indicated that he would pay for the printing costs himself did they relent. Strauss’s father launched the piece at a concert given by his amateur orchestra, Wilde Gung’l, in March 1881.

The works are performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi, who in 2012 celebrated his thirty-year recording career with Chandos Records.