Release Date: 31 May 2005
Label: Naxos - Ex Select Products / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313259021
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: ALWYN
Description
William Alwyn (1905-1985)Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 Sonata alla Toccata Derby DayWilliam Alwyn shares his centenary year with Tippett,Rawsthorne, Lambert and Seiber, but, as aninstrumentalist, composer, conductor, teacher andcommittee member, he arguably had a greater all-roundinfluence on twentieth-century British musical life thanany of them. Born in Northampton, he showed an earlyinterest in music and as a young child started to learn thepiccolo. At the age of fifteen he entered the RoyalAcademy of Music in London as a flute student, laterwinning scholarships that enabled him to continue hisinstrumental training while studying composition. Hewrote a large number of works while establishing acareer as a virtuoso flautist, and in 1926 he wasappointed Professor of Composition at the Academy.The following year he joined the London SymphonyOrchestra to play third flute and piccolo (his firstengagement was at the Three Choirs Festival, where hetook part in a performance of The Dream of Gerontiusconducted by Elgar) and also had his first majororchestral work, the Five Preludes for Orchestra,performed at a Promenade Concert in London. In 1938he took the radical step of withdrawing all hiscompositions, believing them to be technicallyunsatisfactory and insufficiently personal in style. Aftera second period of musical study, this time with thescores of composers he revered, he gradually built up abody of 'mature' works that includes five symphonies,concertos, operas, more than two hundred film scores,and much instrumental, chamber and vocal music.Alwyn, whose name is familiar to many through histeaching works for the piano, had an enduring love ofthe instrument. 'The very touch of my fingers on itskeyboard is a joy in itself', he wrote, 'and itspossibilities and sonorities are infinite'. Yet his largescalepiano works are rarely performed, partly becauseof their demands for a virtuoso technique.The Piano Concerto No. 1 dates from 1930 and wasinspired by the musicianship of Clifford Curzon (1907-1982), Alwyn's fellow-student at the Royal Academy ofMusic and a lifelong friend. Curzon gave the firstperformance in December 1931, with the composerconducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Oneof the most innovative of Alwyn's early works, theconcerto is cast in a single movement that neverthelessfalls into four recognisable sections. The first, Allegrodeciso, which has a toccata-like opening, is soonfollowed by what is effectively the concerto's slowmovement, marked Adagio tranquillo, a gentlyrhapsodic development of musical ideas alreadypresented. After a return to the mood and tempo of theconcerto's opening, a restatement of the work's firstmain theme quickly builds to an orchestral climax. Thisquietens into the Epilogue, Adagio molto e tranquillo,the introspective beauty of which echoes that of thework's second section and brings the concerto to apeaceful conclusion.By the time he wrote the Sonata alla toccata fifteenyears later, Alwyn was using the
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yaqi Yang; Margarita Parsamyan; Robynne Redmon; Minghao Liu; Frank Ragsdale; Kim Josephson; Kevin S
Vilmos Csikos; Olivier Lechardeur; Manon Lamaison
Tomas Cotik; Martingale Ensemble; Ken Selden
