Release Date: 01 January 2000
Label: Naxos - Ex Select Products / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943418628
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: English String Miniatures, Vol. 1
Description
English StringMiniatures English composers have had a strong empathy for stringensembles from Elizabethan times, whether it be in the works for viol consorts,the fantasias of Purcell, theItalianate Op.6 Concerti grossi of Handel, the suites of Parry,Elgar's Serenade and Introduction andAllegro, Holst's St. Paul's and Brook Greensuites, up to nearer our own time, with Britten's Simple Symphony and Bridge Variations and Tippett's Corelli Fantasia. The works presented here werewritten between the 1930s and 1970s, and can be viewed very much as part ofthis great tradition. Despite his prolific choral writing, the instrumentaloutput of John Rutter (b.1945) has been comparativelysmall. This suite, based on English folksongs was published in 1973, but has beensomewhat overshadowed by his ubiquitous carols and settings of the classictexts of the Gloria and Requiem. In addition to the eponymousfolksong of each movement there are additional counter-tunes in the outer ones -I sowed the seeds of love in the first,and The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington in the Handelianfinale. Charles Wilfrid Orr (1893-1976)was almost exclusively a composer of songs, mostly settings of A. E. Houseman.The one exception is this CotswoldHill-Tune, published in 1939 and dedicated to Eugene Goossens.Stylistically it is very much in homage to Delius butOrr steps out of his 'shadow' sufficiently often during the piece to reveal amore personal voice. George Melachrino (1909-1976)was a child prodigy on the violin, and earned a living in various dance bandsof the 1930s. During the Second World War he was the British equivalent ofGlenn Miller, gaining the title 'the sentimental Sergeant-Major' as the head ofa fifty-piece orchestra. After the War, he became one of the leading recordingartists of the day with a string of best-selling albums with his Melachrino Orchestra. His training as a string player isvery much in evidence in Les jeux (The games), the first of a set of pieces forstrings relating to everyday living. The music is anything but 'everyday' withits clever marriage of skittish good fun and emotional lyricism. Peter Dodd (b.1930) has spent much of his working life ina variety of posts in the music department of the BBC. This treatment of the traditionalIrish folk tune, The Lark in the clear Air,was published in 1971 and catches perfectly its subject in deceptively simpleterms without ever lapsing into the routine or predictable. The name of Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960) is thesedays associated with songs and partsongs - Song of Shadows, and Five Eyes amongst them, and Dusk, one of those handful of piecesbetter known when heard than when referred to. However, he wrote concertos and severalsymphonies (Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3are available on Marco Polo 8.223553) in a productive career. Yet it isprobably as a miniaturist that his reputation will stand, and so his Miniature Dance Suite is particularly representativein its gentle mockery of eigh
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
