BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, Pumeza Matshikiza, Sarah Connolly, Joshua Stewart, Ashley Riches – Tippett: A Child of our Time (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:46 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Tippett’s A Child of Our Time begins in sorrow: ‘The world turns on its dark side. It is winter.’ Composed at the start of the Second World War but provoked by decades of intolerance, Tippett’s ‘modern oratorio’ is built around the soul-shaking melodies of African-American spirituals. But the human spirit is unbreakable, and this great British choral masterpiece is anything but a counsel of despair.
Sir Andrew Davis understands that; and after a lifetime championing British music, there are few artists better equipped than our Conductor Laureate to bring out Tippett’s boundless optimism as well as his burning sorrow. The BBC Symphony Chorus is joined by a truly exceptional team of soloists, and it all begins with a great leap of hope and joy: the ever-fresh Concerto for Double String Orchestra.
Read more
James Ehnes, BBC Philharmonic & Andrew Davis – Stravinsky: Violin Concerto, Orchestral Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:56 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
One of the foremost musicians of his generation, James Ehnes continues to dazzle audiences around the world. Here he joins the BBC Philharmonic and Sir Andrew Davis in a recording of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto. Written for the Polish virtuoso Samuel Dushkin, the four-movement work takes the music of Bach as its inspiration, and is built around a chord of the notes D, E, and A, which Stravinsky described as his ‘passport to the concerto’ and with which the solo violin part opens each movement. Dushkin gave the première, conducted by Stravinsky, in Berlin in 1932. Apollon musagète, a ballet in two parts for string orchestra, was written in 1927 – 28, and demonstrates the composer’s complete rejection of the Russian folk music and idioms that had been so instrumental in his previous ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka). They are replaced by a concentration on ‘pure form’, which became known as his neo-classical style. The album is completed by his two orchestral suites – light-hearted music arranged from piano duets he had written in the 1910s – and Scherzo à la russe, a showpiece for the Paul Whiteman band that he composed in the early 1940s when newly arrived in California.
Read more
Jennifer Pike, Andrew Davis, Bergen Philharmonic – Sibelius: Violin Concerto (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:19 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Jean Sibelius is perhaps best known for his seven great symphonies but there is also a large body of music for the concert hall, the theatre, and the salon, some of which is explored on this release. The Violin Concerto in D minor, Sibelius’s only full-length concerto, marries brilliantly idiomatic writing for the solo instrument with the seriousness characteristic of the symphonies. Intensely virtuosic, it is both a dramatic and a deeply romantic work. The Swan of Tuonela comes from the suite of four Lemminkäinen Legends, inspired by traditional Finnish myths. In it the majestic motion of the swan is evoked by the arching phrases of the cor anglais. Also featured are two well-known shorter works indelibly linked with Finnish identity.
Finlandia became a national emblem of the Finnish struggle for independence from Russia while Andante festivo is a staple of Finnish public occasions. The Karelia Suite is another patriotic work, the rough-hewn character of its three movements intended to evoke a folk-like authenticity.
Sir Andrew Davis continues his relationship with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in this their third recording together on Chandos. They are joined in the Violin Concerto by Jennifer Pike, one of the brightest young violinists performing today.
Read more![James Ehnes, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis - Berg: Violin Concerto, Three Pieces for Orchestra (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/12/02/zw9xibuoko4rc_600.jpg)
James Ehnes, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis – Berg: Violin Concerto, Three Pieces for Orchestra (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:01 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Born in 1885, Alban Berg was one of the most significant composers of the Second Viennese School, whose output proved tremendously influential in the development of music in the twentieth century. He was a student of Schoenberg, who found that his juvenile compositions were almost exclusively written for voice; his natural ability to write lyrical melodic lines (even in later life while following the restrictions of twelve-tone serialism) probably remained the most outstanding quality of his style.
(more…)