Tippett: Concerto for double string orchestra

“Three memorable classics: Yehudi Menuhin leads the Fantasia concertante, and in the Piano Concerto, Ogdon is both powerful and reflective. Clear, rather bass-light recorded sound.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2009 ****

“Sir Andrew Davis's formidable Tippettian credentials shine through in every bar of this outstanding anthology. Aided by realistic, firmly focused sound, the Concerto for Double StringOrchestra sounds glorious here. Davis directs a performance of enormous humanity, intelligence and dedication – even Sir Neville Marriner's excellent EMI remake now seems a little matterof- fact by comparison. In the slow movement Davis secures a rapt response from his BBC strings (the exquisite closing bars are drawn with ineffable tenderness), while the finale bounds along with irrepressible vigour and fine rhythmic panache. Davis's Fantasia concertante is an even more remarkable achievement. This is another inspirational display: sensitive and fervent, yet marvellously lucid and concentrated too. Once again, the BBC strings are on radiant form, and the lyrical intensity of their playing during the central climax has to be heard to be believed.
Davis's identification with this sublime music is total. Much the same applies, for that matter, to the committed and incisive account of the 'Ritual Dances' from The Midsummer Marriage, a veritable tour de force to which the BBC Symphony Chorus contributes thrillingly in the final dance.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Did his mastery of mainstream European orchestral music leave Rudolf Kempe at a loss when confronted with Tippett's Utopian synthesis of Tudor polyphony and English folksong in the Concerto for Double String Orchestra? Not a bit of it. There may be a bustling, Hindemithian weight to the first movement's busy textures, an unexpected but not inapposite touch of Straussian opulence in the slow movement, and a lack of truly sprung rhythm in the finale.
But this reading never sells Tippett short, and even in a rather airless recording, the symphonic ambitions that underpin the music's pastoral and pictorial elements are very well realised.
The sound quality in the Berg Concerto is similarly constrained, yet the strengths of the performance cannot be denied. By some standards Edith Peinemann may appear self-effacing, but her technique is secure, her commitment to the piece absolute: in music which has ample flamboyance built in she is never timid or tentative. Kempe ensures that the first movement flows effortlessly around its evocations of the dance, and even if you prefer the later stages of the second movement to move on a bit more than they do here, Kempe's flair for balancing the music's intricate moods and even more intricate strands of texture is admirable. With a lively and eloquent account of Janácek's Sinfonietta thrown in, clear as a bell despite the limitations of the recording, this is a refreshing disc: a reminder of the all-round virtues of the BBC SO in its post-Boulez phase, and of Kempe's special ability to bring not just care but a degree of charisma to performances of 20th-century classics.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…this is a refreshing disc: a reminder of the all-round virtues of the BBC SO in it post-Boulez phase, and of Kempe's special ability to bring not just care but a degree of charisma to performances of 20th-century classics.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2007

“This release contains temptations that put it well ahead of its rivals” BBC Music Magazine

“the performances here are excellently turned and certainly give a superb impression of the music...those who admire the music of Tippett will almost certainly want the complete box. Those who would just like a sample including some of the composer’s most immediately approachable music will welcome this disc in its own right.” MusicWeb International, August 2012

“[Nimbus'] commitment to preserving the composer's own readings of his music during his lifetime was noble, assiduous and beyond reproach ... The achievement, as revealed on this four-CD collection, a panoramic view of his output lasting in all nearly four and a half hours, is such as to renew our sense of Tippett's greatness and his lasting historical presence, and the sheer glory of his music.” BBC Music Magazine