Chandos
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Louis Lortie's credentials for taking on this greatest of musical pilgrimages are self-evident from the start. The opening 'Chapelle de Guillaume Tell', from the Switzerland-inspired first book,... —
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Half-forgotten overtures show the vigour of Britain's musical revivial throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras. —
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Special offer. Mendelssohn: Paulus, Op. 36
(sung in German)
Susan Gritton (soprano), Jean Rigby (mezzo-soprano), Barry Banks (tenor) & Peter Coleman-Wright (bass)
BBC National Chorus of Wales & BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox
Composed in the wake of (and influenced by) Mendelssohn's epoch-making performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, Paulus is an impressive work whose punchy choruses bring out the best in Hickox. —
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Michael Tippett - Complete Symphonies
Faye Robinson (soprano)
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Richard Hickox
The riot of proliferating counterpoint that is Tippett's Symphony No 1 presents enough problems of orchestral balance to give recording teams nightmares. Chandos has managed creditable degrees... —
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The main interest here surrounds the first commercial recording of the 1910 Music for Orchestra.
Premiered in Munich in January 1911, it's an ambitious and frequently arresting creation.
Caetani... — -
[Ehnes] is superb throughout...The Bergen Philharmonic offers the most polished playing, driven by Järvi at often faster than usual tempos...when it matters Järvi abandons his brisk manner for... —
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Stravinsky: Violin Concerto, Scherzo a la russe, Apollon musagete & Orchestral Suites Nos. 1 & 2
James Ehnes (violin), BBC Philharmonic, Sir Andrew Davis
there’s perfect dialogue throughout this most concertante of works, every cue and change of colour picked up with perfect focus. It helps that the sound brings the woodwind as much up front... —
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Special offer. Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2
James Buckle (alto saxophone), Tim McAllister (bass trombone), Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
Fuchs deals in broad, inventive orchestral strokes and doesn’t shy away from his musical emotions. Thrilling, too, to have John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London apply their innate musicality... —
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The most striking feature of these performances is their remarkable clarity of texture which even in the more forceful passages enables us to hear every strand of Mendelssohn’s incredibly resourceful... —
