Elspeth Wyllie ENIGMAS - Solo piano and chamber works

To coincide with Elgar’s 160th birthday on 2nd of June 2017, Divine Art has released a recital recording featuring Elgar’s own solo piano transcription of his much-loved Enigma Variations.  Elgar originally extemporised and sketched out the work at the piano, and his transcription highlights the intimate nature of a work inspired by friends and acquaintances.

This is complemented by a varied collection of masterful works by British composers. Edmund Rubbra’s Two Sonnets by William Alabaster for trio are exquisite, and this is the first modern-day recording with a mezzo, as Rubbra intended. The recital also features the premiere recording of Nicholas Sackman’s Folio I for solo piano – a lively suite originally written for his family. Edwin York Bowen’s Sonata for flute and piano is perhaps familiar to flautists, and Kenneth Leighton’s Elegy to cellists; however both works deserve wider exposure as staples of post-romantic concert repertoire.

Sandrine Chatron / Ophélie Gaillard / Michael Bennett A BRITISH PROMENADE

A 1994 graduate of the Paris Conservatory in harp and chamber music, Sandrine Chatron is also the winner of the Louise Charpentier Competition (1998) and the Arles chamber music competition, as well as being distinguished by the Natexis-Banque Populaire Foundation and the ‘Déclic’ series of Cultures-France. She avidly stands up for the repertoire of her instrument, from the classical harp to contemporary creation, whether as a soloist or chamber player, and within prestigious orchestral ensembles. 

As a soloist, she has performed in the Présences festival, at the Champs-Élysées Theatre, the Orsay Museum and the Maison de Radio France, with the Orchestre Colonne, the Ensemble Fa, La Grande Écurie & La Chambre du Roy, the Nederlands Kammer Orkest and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. She has premiered works by Pierre Boulez (Sur Incises), K. Maratka in 2010, S. Yoshida in 2009, and R. Nillni at the Festival Présences in 2008. 

She takes pleasure in revealing unpublished or little-known scores and has to her credit two critically-acclaimed albums, with Naïve for the Ambroisie collection (‘André Caplet and his contemporaries’ in 2005), and in 2009 ‘Le Salon de Musique de Marie-Antoinette’, recorded on a single-action Erard harp from the Musée de la Musique. She was appointed solo harpist of the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest in 2009. Since 2012 she has taught at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. 

As the title of her new disc British Promenade suggests it, the harpist Sandrine Chatron takes us on a musical wandering in the early 20th England. Along the journey, we meet little known artists, such as Herbert Howells or Cyril Scott, but also the famous Benjamin Britten. Their scores for harp carry us to England, among coastal views and bucolic landscapes. The lyricism of Ophélie Gaillard's cello and the warmth of Michael Bennett's tenor voice enhance the evocative power of the music and complete the pointillist qualities of the harp. (Aparté)