Release Date: 12 January 2004
Label: Naxos - Ex Select Products / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313257027
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: TIPPETT
Description
Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998)A Child of Our TimeMichael Tippett was one of the most gifted and mostinspiring figures in twentieth-century British musicallife. He was born on 2nd January 1905 in London, butgrew up in a village in the East Anglian county ofSuffolk and at a succession of boarding schools.Because his parents lived most of the time on theContinent, he travelled extensively in Europe, acquiringfacility in languages and an unusually internationaloutlook. Childhood piano lessons and concert-goingprompted the ambition of becoming a composer, whichwas furthered by study at the Royal College of Music inLondon between 1923 and 1928, and later by privatelessons with R.O. Morris. During the 1930s Tippettlived in the Surrey countryside south of London, earninga frugal living from teaching, and becoming involved inleft-wing politics. He withheld most of his compositionsof that period: his earliest published works are his FirstString Quartet, completed in 1935 (and in fact rewritteneight years later), and the first of his four Piano Sonatas,composed in 1936-38. Early in the Second World War,Tippett was appointed Director of Music at MorleyCollege, an adult education institute in south London; hewas to hold the post until 1951, conducting the MorleyChoir in numerous concerts of early and new music. Alifelong pacifist, he was imprisoned for three months in1943 as a conscientious objector, but his stock as acomposer rose gradually, through performances andbroadcasts of works including his Concerto for DoubleString Orchestra and A Child of Our Time. Theseestablished his individual compositional voice, withtraditional forms modelled on those of Beethoven filledout in contrapuntal textures - line against line asopposed to chord after chord - and melodies animatedby lithe syncopated or irregular rhythms, suggestedequally by Stravinsky, sixteenth-century madrigals andjazz.After the War Tippett became well known not onlyas a conductor but also as a broadcaster on musical andcultural topics; meanwhile, he was working for severalyears on the first of his five operas, The MidsummerMarriage, which eventually reached the stage in 1955.This and two satellite works of the 1950s, the PianoConcerto and the Second Symphony, marked a peak ofrich, exuberant invention in his music. In the early1960s, he adopted more austere textures, complementedby mosaic-like construction, in such works as the operaKing Priam, the Concerto for Orchestra and the shortoratorio The Vision of St Augustine. Despite turningsixty in 1965, and being knighted the following year,Tippett remained apart from the Establishment,retaining his iconoclastic youthfulness of manner, anddelighting in collaborations with young players andperformances to young audiences. He became especiallypopular in the United States: his visits there brought anew swathe of influences, from both American classicalmusic and popular culture, into such works of the 1970sas the operas The Knot Garden and The Ice Break and
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
Zenz:Cathariou:Iacovidou
Zahir Ensemble
Yun-Yi Qin
