Release Date: 01 December 2017
Label: Prima Facie
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 0607128998716
Genres: Classical Twentieth Century
Description
This album from Prima Facie showcases Alan Rawsthorne's Woodwind Concertos and Chamber Works (composed between 1936 and 1961) performed by various artists including Linda Merrick, Sylvia Harper, Jill Crowther, the Manchester Sinfonia and The English Northern Philharmonia.
Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971) gained his first notable success at the London Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1936 with a performance of his Theme and Variations for Two Violins. A further success was registered at the Warsaw Festival of the same organization in 1939 with his Symphonic Studies. Following the war, in which he served in the Army, he devoted himself to composition and between then and his death was to produce several substantial works, making important contributions to the chamber music and solo piano repertoire.
The recordings of three of the works on this disc, the Quartet for oboe, violin, viola and cello (No.1), Studies on a Theme by Bach for string trio and the Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra were included on a now deleted CD released by ASC in 2002. These are represented here alongside new recordings of further chamber music and the Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra.
In the case of the Clarinet Concerto, this album provided an opportunity to include not only the premiere recording of the published, original ending, but also the revised ending. The very attractive arrangement of 'Brother James's Air', also for cello and piano, is a premiere recording. 'A Most Eloquent Music', from the incidental music Rawsthorne composed for the 1961 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet, has also been included on a CD released by the RSC in commemoration of the four- hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death.
Artists
Linda Merrick
Manchester Sinfonia, cond. Richard Howarth
Sylvia Harper
Jake Rea
David Aspin
Joseph Spooner
David Owen Norris
John Turner
Laura Robinson
Roger Child
Jill Crowther
The English Northern Philharmonia, cond. Alan Cuckston
Tracklisting
Xuefei Yang, Johannes Moser, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Or
Kenneth Hamilton
Kenneth Hamilton
Michael Cretu
Laura Serra
The Choir of Robinson College, Cambridge & Will Sims
Helen Cawthorne
David Daly, Duncan Honeybourne, Ondrej Vrabec, Daniel Wiesner, Graham Walker, David Trippett
