Roderick Williams, James Gilchrist, Tim Horton & Ensemble 360
Release Date: 25 October 2019
Label: First Hand Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5060216349190
Genres: Classical Chamber Music
Description
This album of premiere recordings of works by Howard Skempton, including 'Man and Bat', the Piano Concerto, 'The Moon is Flashing' and 'Eternity's Sunrise', features possibly the greatest baritone of our time Roderick Williams, the celebrated tenor James Gilchrist, leading chamber pianist Tim Horton and the fantastic Ensemble 360.
Skempton's music can be said to be exquisite and simple, with strong clarity and sophistication. His finely crafted, distinctive writing is sometimes catchy, sometimes transcendental, always memorable.
Howard Skempton was born in Chester in 1947, and has worked as a composer, accordionist and music publisher. He studied in London with Cornelius Cardew from 1967, which helped Skempton to discover a musical language of great simplicity. Since then he has continued to write undeflected by compositional trends, producing a corpus of more than 300 works – many pieces being miniatures for solo piano or accordion. Skempton calls these pieces 'the central nervous system' of his work.
Skempton's catalogue of works is also as diverse as it is long, ranging from pieces for solo cello (Six Figures, 1998), and guitar (Five Preludes, 1999), to the Chamber Concerto for fifteen players, the Concerto for Hurdy-Gurdy and Percussion, and Lento, premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in 1991, and performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, at the 2010 BBC Proms.
Artists:
Roderick Williams - Baritone
James Gilchrist - Tenor
Tim Horton - Piano
Ensemble 360
Tracklisting
Noxwode, Conor Gricmanis
Tessa Lark, Jon Batiste, Michael Cleveland, Sierra Hull, Edgar Meyer
David de Winter and The Brook Street Band
Alexander Baillie & Nigel Yandell
Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa; Alvaro Cassuto
The Flautadors Recorder Quartet
The Telling
Sarah Cahill
Karolos
The Counterpoints
Narratio Quartet
Danbi Um; Juho Pohjonen
Engegard Quartet, NyNorsk Messingkvintett
Flute Alors
Louise Bessette
Jonas Batstrand, Jorn Fossheim
