Release Date: 04 January 2006
Label: Naxos - Ex Select Products / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313275229
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: English String Miniatures, Vol. 5
Description
English String Miniatures, Volume 5 Pamela Harrison was born and brought up in Kent before studying at the Royal College of Music with Gordon Jacob (composition) and Arthur Benjamin (piano). In 1943 she married the cellist Harvey Phillips, and her Suite for Timothy was written for the first birthday of her son five years later. Her main interest always lay in chamber music, and so this suite is one of only a handful written outside this area, others being a piano concertante, and settings for tenor and strings of Baudelaire, Dowson, Herrick and Thomas. Francis Chagrin was born Alexander Paucker in Romania, picking up his new name en route to England via France. In 1943, in London, he founded the Committee (later Society) for the Promotion of New Music which gave first performances of many works by composers, both leading and less well known. His own compositions included two completed symphonies, much chamber music, songs and concertante works, including a Romanian Rhapsody for Larry Adler, film scores, including The Colditz Story, An Inspector Calls, and the many Hoffnung music cartoons made by Halas and Batchelor, and television series, including The Four Just Men. The Renaissance Suite is practically scored for 'string orchestra (and/or wind quartet)' and consists of versions of anonymous sixteenth and seventeenth century pieces. The Gagliarda section is particularly striking with its irregular phrase lengths, while the whole is a happy mix of the authentic and the modern day. Percy Eastman Fletcher was born in Derby and with a practical experience of playing violin, piano and organ, spent a great part of his life as a West End musical director at various theatres, culminating at His Majesty's from 1915 until his death. One of his earliest successes there was the long-running Chu Chin Chow. His own music covers songs, choruses. and orchestral miniatures and suites. He wrote at least two brass band classics that remain in the repertory, are regularly wheeled out for contests and stand up well against later examples from more distinguished hands. However, the vast majority of his output, apart from the perennial Bal Masque, remains unheard. The Folksong and Fiddle Dance, curiously subtitled 'suite', is a succinct diptych of charm and vitality that has a freshness and spontaneity that marks so much of his music. Paul Lewis was born in Brighton, and spurned university and music college to make his own way as a composer, gaining his first television score at the age of twenty. Since then he has continued to write prolifically for the medium, most notably with Arthur of the Britons, and more recently, with Woof! and Bernard's Watch. Suite navarraise was written after a holiday in the French Basque region, and was inspired by the birth there in 1553 of Henri de Navarre, later Henri IV of France. In the final stage of pregnancy, his mother made a long and arduous journey to the ducal seat of Pau, singing all the way to the unborn child to
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
