Arthur Benjamin: Violin Sonatina & Viola Sonata

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Whether playing his viola or violin, Lawrence Power is in total sympathy with Benjamin's shifting moods, and Simon Crawford-Phillips proves a lithe and responsive piano partner. — BBC Music Magazine, July 2014, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 2nd Jun 2014
Catalogue No: CDA67969
Label: Hyperion
Length: 66 minutes

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Benjamin, A: Sonatina for Violin & Piano (1925)

Work length16:08

$3.30

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$6.15

Lawrence Power (violin), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

I. Tranquilly flowing

Track length7:43

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II. Scherzo di stile antico

Track length2:43

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III. Rondo: Con moto ma non allegro

Track length5:42

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Benjamin, A: Three Violin Pieces (1921-25)

Work length11:29

$3.30

$4.50

$6.15

Lawrence Power (violin), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

I. Arabesque (The Muted Pavane)

Track length4:31

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II. Carnavalesque: Tempo di valse

Track length3:35

$1.10

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III. Humoresque: Non troppo allegro

Track length3:23

$1.10

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Benjamin, A: A Tune & Variations. For Little People (1939)

Work length3:23

$1.10

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$2.05

Lawrence Power (violin), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

Benjamin, A: Le Tombeau de Ravel: Valse-Caprices

Work length13:15

$1.10

$1.50

$2.05

Lawrence Power (viola), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

Benjamin, A: Sonata for Viola & Piano (1942)

Work length17:07

$3.30

$4.50

$6.15

Lawrence Power (viola), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

I. Elegy: Adagio e mesto

Track length7:07

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II. Waltz: Quasi improvisatore –

Track length5:48

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III. Toccata: Allegro ma non troppo

Track length4:12

$1.10

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Benjamin, A: From San Domingo

Work length2:51

$1.10

$1.50

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Lawrence Power (viola), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

Benjamin, A: Jamaican Rumba

Work length1:49

$1.10

$1.50

$2.05

Lawrence Power (viola), Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)

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About

Lawrence Power is Britain’s greatest living viola player, the true successor to Lionel Tertis and William Primrose. Part of his mission is to perform and record music premiered by those masters of the previous century, including works by York Bowen, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Dale, William Walton and, here, Arthur Benjamin.

Benjamin was one of the first Australian musicians to forge an international reputation. His creative output, which encompasses about eighty works altogether, manifests a great variety of idioms and genres. It includes a good number of light-music miniatures, many of them infused with a jazz or Afro-Caribbean flavour: the most famous of these is the Jamaican Rumba which concludes this album.

This album represents something of a departure for Lawrence Power’s recording career: he performs Benjamin’s Violin Sonatina on the violin. This ambitious, virtuosic and formidably accomplished work is not at all diminutive—perhaps the lack of a slow movement was felt to debar it from full sonata status.

Benjamin’s Viola Sonata is a wartime piece, with a first movement of dark foreboding. It manifests a spiritual affinity with the large-scale and often elegiac Symphony that Benjamin was about to begin composing, and it contains the bleakest and perhaps the most deeply felt music on the present album. It is an impressive, powerful and virtuosic work, with many technical challenges, all of which Lawrence scales with his usual astonishing prowess.

Reviews

July 2014

Whether playing his viola or violin, Lawrence Power is in total sympathy with Benjamin's shifting moods, and Simon Crawford-Phillips proves a lithe and responsive piano partner.

August 2014

Although Lawrence Power is not quite as characterful or fine-grained a fiddler as he is a viola-player, there's precious little with which to take issue about his alert and sensitive advocacy. His interpretation of the tremendous Viola Sonata is truly magnificent, and he receives impeccable support throughout from Simon Crawford-Phillips.

25th May 2014

Power’s viola sound has a notable seductiveness, a sort of electric sweetness, but his genius for phrasing is as effective in Benjamin’s 1924 Violin Sonatina (more substantial than the title suggests) as in his searching 1942 Viola Sonata, the focus here.

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Arthur Benjamin: Violin Sonatina & Viola Sonata

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