Vaughan Williams: Oboe Concerto in A minor

Hallé returns with a disc of Vaughan Williams in works chosen to illustrate the full range of colour and highly accomplished playing of the award winning ensemble under its Musical Director, Sir Mark Elder.

Latest release for award winning label in the English repertoire at which it excels.

Features Hallé Principal Oboist Stéphane Rancourt as soloist.

The London Symphony and Oboe Concerto were both personal favourites of the composer and contain some of his finest writing.

Vaughan Williams claimed that the Symphony should “stand or fall as ‘absolute’ music” but, as Michael Kennedy says in the authoritative note which accompanies the disc, in this work direct references to “street cries, the Abbey chimes, the Cockney’s mouth-organ and accordion, are raised to the level of great art. “

The Concerto for Oboe and Strings contains virtuosic writing for the soloist, against exquisite string writing, in a work whose early material derived from sketches the composer had prepared for the Scherzo of his 5th Symphony.

Daniel Barenboim's sumptuous performances of English music have long been favourites and here they are beautifully remastered with state-of-the-art technology for this release. Pinchas Zukerman's performance of The Lark Ascending is surely a stand-out among recordings of this work ('beautifully played, highly sympathetic performance' said Gramophone). What's more, the addition of Vaughan Williams's Tuba Concerto, making its first international appearance on CD, fills out this generous CD and collects together all of Barenboim's recordings of English music on one CD.

Paul Pattersonʼs Phoenix Concerto gives solo oboist Emily Pailthorpe the character of the mythical Phoenix Firebird itself: mercurial, sensuous, mesmerising and captivating.

Commissioned by David Bowerman and first performed in 2009, this is the world premiere recording. Patterson writes “The fire, passion and power of the Phoenix are very present in the outer movements of this piece, with the last movement filled with mesmerising dance-rhythms. The oboeʼs unparalleled ability to recreate the feel of exotic birgsong is showcased in the opening cadenza and central slow movement.”

Alongside this new work is Vaughan Williamsʼ beloved Concerto in A minor for Oboe and Strings, composed for another great exponent of the oboe, Leon Goossens, in 1944. Although superficially a work of pastoral serenity and bucolic piping for the soloist, there are undercurrents that remind the listener that it was composed in wartime.

The Howells Oboe Sonata is another world premiere, here in a new orchestration by Benjamin Wallfisch for strings with harp, played by Hugh Webb. In its original incarnation (not heard until after the composerʼs death in 1982, and with heavily orchestral piano writing) the work presented problems to its dedicatee, again Goosens, who said he had ʻserious reservationsʼ.

Of this new arrangement, however, Pailthorpe says: “I feel liberated… I can float my sound over the breadth of the ECO strings, and the harp texture is wonderful...”. She adds: “The Howells and the Vaughan Williams, both written in the early 1940ʼs, arise from the ashes of World War II and, in this sense, they seem fitting to include on this “Phoenix” CD."

Founder member of acclaimed chamber ensemble Conchord, Emily Pailthorpe is a graduate of the Julliard School and the youngest ever winner of the Gillet International Oboe Competition. She made her solo Wigmore debut in 2004 and guests as principal oboe with several leading international orchestras.

This 2-CD set celebrates Evelyn Rothwell – Lady Barbirolli (1911-2008) and features rare recordings of her performing concertos and chamber works. The recordings originate from Lady Barbirolli’s own archive. Among the recordings selected for issue here it is good to find the Strauss Oboe Concerto, perhaps the greatest of the many concert for the instrument. Of her association with the Martinu concerto Evelyn was particularly proud. She was a friend of its dedicatee, the Czech player Jiri Tancubudek, and when he came over from Australia to introduce the concerto in Europe she was able to take over some of the performances he wasn’t able to honour, including its Proms première.

It is especially good to hear Evelyn and Barbirolli in partnership in the Mozart Concerto K314. They gave the concerto’s first performance in the version that the Austrian musicologist and conductor Bernhard Paumgartner arranged and edited of the work (previously known only as a flute concerto). After the Salzburg première Evelyn introduced it at the Proms with the LSO under Basil Cameron. The circumstances surrounding the various performances of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concerto da Camera are somewhat confusing. The performance included here was given by the Barbirollis in a BBC studio on 6 October 1950, yet when Evelyn played it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent at the Proms a year later (31 July 1951) it was announced as its first performance in England (in the BBC’s 1981 history of its symphony orchestra as a ‘World Première’). In 1956 when it was announced that illness would prevent Barbirolli’s appearances at the Proms, it was George Weldon who deputised for him in Geoffrey Bush’s Oboe Concerto. Little need be said about Vaughan Williams’s Concerto: the Barbirolli’s enjoyed an extraordinarily warm friendship with the composer and his wife, musically rewarded in the most handsome way with the dedication to the conductor of RVW’s Symphony No.8. The old composer seemed to have a special affection for Evelyn’s playing of it: ‘We listened to your record the other night, and it is lovely. I cannot imagine anything better in the way of a performance ...’ he wrote to her.