The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Smyth: Mass in D Major & Overture to “The Wreckers” (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:45 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Ethel Smyth was one of England’s foremost Victorian composers, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first female composer to be honoured with a Damehood. She studied composition with Carl Reineke in Leipzig (alongside Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky) and then privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg (who introduced her to Brahms and Clara Schumann). Her Mass in D is her only largescale religious work, although it was certainly composed for the concert hall rather than the church. Scored for 4 soloists, choir, and orchestra, the Mass in D sets the usual six parts of the mass, but is performed with the Gloria at the end, not second, at the instruction of the composer. Her opera The Wreckers, set in mid-eighteenth-century Cornwall, is considered by some critics to be the ‘most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten’. The Overture sets the scene wonderfully, as well as introducing the main thematic material to follow. Sakari Oramo and his BBC forces are joined by an outstanding quartet of soloists.
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Christine Rice, Stuart Skelton, The BBC Symphony Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Verklärte Nacht (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:35 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Hot on the heels of their acclaimed recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, Stuart Skelton and Edward Gardner join forces with Christine Rice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for this fascinating programme of early twentieth-century works. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht needs no introduction, but far rarer is Oscar Fried’s contemporaneous setting of the same poem.
Composed in 1901 for soloists and orchestra, Fried’s version is a true setting of (as opposed to Schoenberg’s reflection on) the text by Richard Dehmel. Lehár wrote Fieber in 1915 as the closing part of his song cycle Aus eiserner Zeit – he then made the orchestral setting a year later. Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds (“Songs of Farewell”) date from the early 1920s, whilst he was still in Vienna, and shortly after he had completed the opera Die tote Stadt. Setting poetry by Christina Rossetti, Edith Ronsperger, and Ernst Lothar, the cycle is a poignant reflection on the Great War.
Read more![Ah Young Hong, Ensemble Klang, Tito Muñoz, The BBC Symphony Orchestra - Michael Hersch: The Script of Storms (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/11/14/exv9nutbyxchc_600.jpg)
Ah Young Hong, Ensemble Klang, Tito Muñoz, The BBC Symphony Orchestra – Michael Hersch: The Script of Storms (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:12 minutes | 817 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings
Composer Michael Hersch releases two works featuring his frequent collaborator soprano Ah Young Hong: cortex and ankle with Dutch based Ensemble Klang and the script of storms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Tito Muñoz. Hersch sets powerful texts by Christopher Middleton and Fawzi Karim respectively in these gripping works.
“Hersch’s music gets under the listener’s skin like no other … the voice is central, but a voice that sounds like an instrument and that miraculously merges with the instruments, a technique that is tailor-made for Hong … the intensity goes through marrow and bone.”
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The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent – Ralph Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (Live) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:39 minutes | 369 MB | Genre: Classique
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
SOMM celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth with definitive, newly remastered performances by Lani Spahr of his ever-popular The Wasps Overture and two symphonies – the startling Sixth and, in its world premiere performance, the valedictorian Ninth – with Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As Simon Heffer comments in his authoritative booklet notes, this major new release is notable for containing historical performances (from 1957, 1958 and 1964), for Spahr’s meticulous restorations, and for offering “a clear indication of the genius of” Sargent.
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The BBC Symphony Orchestra – Ralph Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (Live) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:39 minutes | 369 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SOMM Recordings
Pour fêter le 150e anniversaire de la naissance de Ralph Vaughan Williams, le très intéressant label SOMM poursuit la publication d’archives rares. Dans ce volume, véritable révélation, trois témoignages de Sir Malcolm Sargent, tous trois somptueux, et même envoûtants (l’Ouverture de The Wasps, emportée dans un élan irrésistible). La Symphonie n° 6, œuvre complexe, dispense ici ses équilibres fins et subtils, sans que jamais le mouvement ne soit coupé. Sir Colin Davis s’en souviendra (BR-Klassik).
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Anna Patalong, Rosie Aldridge, Samuel Sakker, Benedict Nelson ,The BBC Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo – Alwyn: Miss Julie (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:55:02 minutes | 1,87 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.
Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 197376. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of that title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed, because of differences with his then librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimised and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterisation, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.
Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.
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