BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Dimitri Mestdag, Laurent Ben Slimane & Martyn Brabbins – Mythologies and Mad Songs (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Dimitri Mestdag, Laurent Ben Slimane & Martyn Brabbins – Mythologies and Mad Songs (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:25 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orchid Classics

“Mythologies and Mad Songs” explores the nuanced compositions of American composer Geoffrey Gordon, in a thoughtfully-crafted selection performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony and Philharmonia Orchestras, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The album opens with “PUCK – fleeing from the dawn,” an overture marked by captivating intensity, introducing Gordon’s signature elements of passionate melody and refined orchestration. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, led by Brabbins, brings these compositions to life, creating a tapestry of dark and luminous musical expressions. Dimitri Mestdag’s cor anglais adds an unnerving layer in “Mad Song,” a new sonority further explored in the following “ICE – aut inveniam viam aut faciam,” showcasing Gordon’s adept handling of sonic textures. The journey concludes with “Prometheus,” a bass clarinet concerto after Franz Kafka, featuring bass clarinettist Ben Slimane and the Philharmonia. Geoffrey Gordon’s remarkable contributions to contemporary music, characterised by infectious style and sonic experimentation, resonate throughout the album. In “Mythologies and Mad Songs,” Gordon’s music invites listeners on a reflective journey, where myth and melody converge in a harmonious dance. The album promises a symphonic exploration that captivates and challenges, leaving its own unique dent on the canvas of modern classical music.

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Emma Tring, BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: Symphonies 2 & 6; Verlaine Songs (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Emma Tring, BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: Symphonies 2 & 6; Verlaine Songs (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:51 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

John Pickard is best known for his powerful orchestral and instrumental works, and his music has been widely praised for its large-scale sense of architecture and bold handling of an extended tonal idiom. This recording brings together three works composed over a period of almost forty years, providing a glimpse of the composer’s creative range. The Second Symphony, completed when Pickard was 23, is an extremely impressive and concentrated work. Its starting point was John Hersey’s book Hiroshima, which describes how vegetation quickly reasserted its presence amid the city’s ashes. The Verlaine Songs feature six poems by the French poet Paul Verlaine. Chosen for their broad range of expression, the poems were grouped in an order that provides dramatic contrast and an overall progression of mood. The cycle was composed for the soprano Emma Tring, with her particular vocal characteristics very much in Pickard’s mind. The Sixth Symphony, which completes this recording, was composed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is dedicated to Robert von Bahr, founder of BIS Records. After a first movement dominated by a feeling of unease, the second offers relief from the darkness. This recording was the work’s first performance.

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BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins – Pickard: Symphony No. 5 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins - Pickard: Symphony No. 5 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins – Pickard: Symphony No. 5 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:49 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

John Pickard is a respected English composer best known for his orchestral works. This release from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Martyn Brabbins features the engaging Symphony No. 5 as well as the evocative Sixteen Sunrises and Pickard’s arrangement of the Toccata from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo for modern orchestra.
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Paul Watkins, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins – Scott: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra & Symphony No. 1 (2008/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Paul Watkins, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins - Scott: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra & Symphony No. 1 (2008/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Paul Watkins, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins – Scott: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra & Symphony No. 1 (2008/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:00 minutes | 977 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Our survey of orchestral music by Cyril Scott comes to a close with the premiere recording of the Cello Concerto and Symphony No. 1. The BBC Philharmonic is conducted by Martyn Brabbins, with Paul Watkins as the cello soloist. From an early stage of his musical education Scott was influenced by German artistic ideas and his Symphony No. 1 is dedicated to the poet Stefan George. We have Percy Grainger to thank for preserving the score, in which Scott experiments with a modern rhapsodic style. The Cello Concerto is a later work and shows the influence of Ravel and Debussy. This is a virtuosic and extravagant work full of mysticism and haunting melodies.
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Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra & Pekka Huusisto and BBC Schottish Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Pictured Within; Jaakko Kuusisto: Symphony (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra & Pekka Huusisto and BBC Schottish Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Pictured Within; Jaakko Kuusisto: Symphony (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:06:32 minutes | 811 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

This disc is a double tribute. The first work, Pictured Within, is a collective effort conceived as a major project to mark the 60th birthday of conductor Martyn Brabbins, whose reputation in new music and British music is beyond reproach. Following the pattern of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Pictured Within is a series of 14 variations on a theme, each of which takes up the character of the equivalent variation in Elgar’s work, the difference being that here 14 different composers have each contributed a variation in tribute to Brabbins. Also on the SACD is Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony, a fitting tribute to the composer, conductor and violinist who passed away in 2022. Illness left Jaakko no time to complete his work, so it fell to his brother Pekka – who conducts here – and Jari Eskola to finish it. The result is a powerful piece, full of familiar themes and melodies derived from Jaakko’s existing compositions, to which are added autobiographical extra-musical elements. The moving conclusion is a collage of fragmented phrases inspired by the signals emitted by lighthouses and ships, as if Kuusisto’s spirit had been sent out to sea.

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BBC Singers & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: Mass in Troubled Times (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC Singers & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: Mass in Troubled Times (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:12 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Previous BIS releases of works by John Pickard have mainly featured instrumental compositions. This recording presents another facet of the British composer’s work, with compositions for choir under the expert direction of Martyn Brabbins as well as two instrumental pieces. The five short Latin motets as well as Ozymandias, Pickard’s opus 1, can be described as ‘occasional pieces’ composed during the composer’s student years or for the choir he conducts at the University of Bristol. They display solid tonal grounding and mainly homophonic writing and provide a stepping-stone to some of the more dissonant style found in the latter works. Written for the BBC Singers, whose reputation is well established, the Mass in Troubled Times is an ambitious work bearing witness to a context of global uncertainty. The Mass is a collaboration with the writer Gavin D’Costa, who conceived a complex text based on multiple sources in five languages, combining Western and Middle Eastern religious texts with poetry evoking the plight of refugees. Orion for trumpet and organ, which is partly programmatic, evoking the most splendid constellation and allowing trumpeter Chloë Abbott to shine, and Tesserae for solo organ, with its dazzling virtuosity, played here by the work’s first performer, David Goode, complete this disc.

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Nash Ensemble & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: The Gardener of Aleppo & Other Chamber Works (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Nash Ensemble & Martyn Brabbins – John Pickard: The Gardener of Aleppo & Other Chamber Works (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:19:22 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Four previous releases on BIS Records have all featured John Pickard’s music for large orchestra – or, in the case of the Gaia Symphony, large brass band. This new album, on the other hand, presents scorings ranging from a solo oboe to a chamber ensemble of eight players. The seven works cover just over 30 years; the earliest one, Serenata Concertata, was Pickard’s first paid commission written at the age of twenty. In his liner notes, Pickard notes that he has an aversion to repeating himself: ‘so each new work tends to be a reaction against the character, structure and technique of the previous one… The result has been a body of work with a wide expressive range and this disc gives some indication of that. The pieces on it are grouped in a broad progression from the serious to the more lighthearted’.

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Lawrence Power, Martyn Brabbins, BBC Philharmonic – MacMillan: Symphony No 4 & Viola Concerto (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lawrence Power, Martyn Brabbins, BBC Philharmonic – MacMillan: Symphony No 4 & Viola Concerto (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:29 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

MacMillan’s viola concerto was written for Lawrence Power, who brings a unique authority to this, its first recording. The fourth symphony—a major addition to the repertoire—is a generous and appropriate coupling, both works incorporating and alchemically transforming musical elements from the distant past.

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Martyn Brabbins, BBC Symphony Orchestra – Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antartica & Symphony No 9 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Martyn Brabbins, BBC Symphony Orchestra – Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antartica & Symphony No 9 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:44 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Two late, great Vaughan Williams symphonies: with the ‘Antartica’ and No 9, Martyn Brabbins and his BBC forces complete a cycle enthusiastically acclaimed by Radio 3 Record Review as ‘unmissable’.

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Philippe Graffin, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins – Romantic Violin Concerto 18 – Jongen: Violin Concerto; Lazzari: Rapsodie (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Philippe Graffin, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins - Romantic Violin Concerto 18 - Jongen: Violin Concerto; Lazzari: Rapsodie (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Philippe Graffin, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins – Romantic Violin Concerto 18 – Jongen: Violin Concerto; Lazzari: Rapsodie (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:41 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

The Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches Belgium and the music of Joseph Jongen, a composer more celebrated for his organ music now, but who was equally admired in his day for his orchestral and chamber works. Jongen studied at the Liège Conservatoire where he heard the great violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and composer-conductors Vincent d’Indy and Richard Strauss.

In this new album Philippe Graffin (a welcome and familiar presence in this series) collaborates with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Martyn Brabbins in Jongen’s Violin Concerto, one of the composer’s first substantial works. It was described by his contemporary Florent Schmitt as ‘one of the finest violin concertos’; and he admired the ‘outpouring of warm lyricism’ and ‘lush profusion of themes and rhythms’.

Also included are other works for violin and orchestra, and a Rapsodie for the same forces by Italian Romantic Sylvio Lazzari (1857–1944) who was influenced—as was Jongen—by the music of César Franck.
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BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins – Symphony No. 5 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins - Symphony No. 5 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins – Symphony No. 5 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:49 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

John Pickard is a respected English composer best known for his orchestral works. This release from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Martyn Brabbins features the engaging Symphony No. 5 as well as the evocative Sixteen Sunrises and Pickard’s arrangement of the Toccata from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo for modern orchestra.
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Håkan Hardenberger & Martyn Brabbins – Stories (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Håkan Hardenberger & Martyn Brabbins – Stories (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:00 minutes | 1016 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Alongside his celebrated performances of the classical repertory, HåkanHardenbergeris also renowned as a pioneer of significant new trumpet works. The three works on this disc were all composed with him in mind, and illustrate his many-facetted musical persona. The most recent of them, ‘True Stories’ by Betsy Jolas, was written in order to give Hardenberger and Roger Murarooccasion to perform together. Its title springs from the fact that the work forms the composer’s first attempt to work with sounds selected from daily life and either ‘tamed’ through stylization or left quasi crude.

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Timothy Ridout, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Elgar: Viola Concerto – Bloch: Suite for Viola and Orchestra (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Timothy Ridout, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins – Elgar: Viola Concerto – Bloch: Suite for Viola and Orchestra (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 58:56 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Timothy Ridout gives us the opportunity to discover the splendid viola version of Elgar’s famous Cello Concerto – an arrangement approved by the composer, who conducted it’s premiere in 1930. In addition to this deeply moving work, he gives us a powerful, poetic reading of Bloch’s all too rarely performed Suite for Viola and Orchestra, in which the Swiss composer indulged his fascination with the Orient.

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Martyn Brabbins – Gregson: Blazon, Violin Concerto, Clarinet Concerto & Stepping Out (2003) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Martyn Brabbins – Gregson: Blazon, Violin Concerto, Clarinet Concerto & Stepping Out (2003)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:44 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra bring to life the varied influences of Edward Gregson on this recording of four world premieres, combining the structural clarity of Bartók and Hindemith, the economy and incisiveness of Stravinsky, the rhythmic flair of Walton and the simple modality of Vaughan Williams. To that list, Tippett, Lutoslawski, Messiaen and John Adams could also be added. This is a consciously eclectic mix, informing an approach to writing which is rigorous, disciplined and rooted firmly within the symphonic mainstream. The soloists on the Clarinet Concerto and Violin Concerto are Michael Collins and Olivier Charlier respectively.

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins – Elgar: Enigma Variations & other orchestral works (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins – Elgar: Enigma Variations & other orchestral works (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:55 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Two much-loved orchestral favourites representing the summit of Elgar’s maturity are coupled with three of the lesser-known wartime works, here receiving their first recordings with the original French texts. Kate Royal is the soprano soloist in Une voix dans le désert, a hauntingly tender masterpiece which every Elgarian should know.

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