Nigel Short / London Symphony Orchestra / Tenebrae FAURÉ Requiem - J.S. BACH Partitas, Chorales & Ciaconna

 

REQUIEM

 

SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet ECHOES

 

ECHOES

 

The Sixteen / Harry Christophers HANDEL Acis and Galatea

Famed for its interpretations of some of Handel’s most loved works, The Sixteen marks the start of its 40th anniversary season by releasing its first new Handel recording in five years.

Handel’s pastoral opera is a tale of love, tragedy and liberation. The libretto by John Gay, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (book XIII), tells of the eternal love between the mortal shepherd Acis and goddess Galatea and how it is doomed by the jealous cyclops Polyphemus.

Handel’s music beautifully demonstrates the pain and love in such beautiful, dramatic choruses as ‘Wretched lovers!’ and the grief felt by Galatea in ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan’.

Staying true to the premiere in 1718, just five singers and nine instrumentalists feature on this intimate recording.

'Christophers uses stylish Handelians and "consort" singers who blend to perfection in this intimate "chamber" performance. The big success here is Stuart Young's rotund-sounding, menacing Polyphemus, but Grace Davidson's virginal Galatea gives immense pleasure.' The Sunday Times

Grace Davidson / Academy of Ancient Music VIVALDI - HANDEL

It is a great pleasure to have recorded these glorious sacred works after performing them before an audience so many times. To make a recording with such a wonderful orchestra and in the pearly acoustic of All Hallows’ Church, Gospel Oak was a joy. I hope you will share these feelings when you hear the result. Special thanks to my dearest parents, Nigel and our wonderful children for their constant love and support. (Grace Davidson, 2018)

Nigel Short / London Symphony Orchestra / Tenebrae FAURÉ Requiem - J.S. BACH Partitas, Chorales & Ciaconna

Even though Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor receives top billing on this 2012 release from LSO Live, listeners may be excused if they find the performance of J.S. Bach's Partita in D minor with Chorales to be the most interesting part of the disc. Scholarship has revealed the Partita and its famous Ciaconna (Chaconne) to be connected to various funereal chorale melodies, which Bach wove into his music as a private tribute to his late first wife, Maria Barbara. To help illustrate this, Nigel Short and Tenebrae perform the chorales "Ach Herr, laß dein lieb Engelein," "Christ lag in Todesbanden," "Den Tod niemand swingen kunnt," and "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden," between movements of the Partita and underscoring the Ciaconna where Gordan Nikolic's carefully phrased violin melody makes reference to the chorales. For musical sleuths, this is quite an exercise in detection, though the emotional impact of hearing the violin soaring and weaving through the choir's dirges is not to be underrated. The Bach certainly prepares the listener for the 1893 chamber version of Fauré's somber but soothing Requiem, in which the London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble accompanies Tenebrae with strength and beauty. While the performances are admirable for their undeniable power to move, the super audio sound of these live recordings is uneven and disconcerting, falling short of the label's usual high standards by being either too thin, as in the Bach, or too booming, as in the Fauré. (Blair Sanderson)

MAX RICHTER Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works, as the name suggests, draws from Richter's score for Wolf Works, a critically acclaimed three-act Royal Ballet production from Wayne McGregor inspired by the works of the influential English writer Virginia Woolf. Described as featuring "a vast palette of sounds—from solo instrumental and orchestral episodes, to electronic textures and music for wordless soprano," the score makes use of themes from three of Woolf's novels, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves. It also employs a rare 1937 BBC recording of Woolf reading an essay called "Craftsmanship," reportedly the only surviving recording of Woolf's voice, along with the farewell note she left her husband before committing suicide in 1941, which is read by Gillian Anderson.

Ex Cathedra / Jeffrey Skidmore ALEC ROTH A Time to Dance & other choral works

A Time to Dance was first performed in Sherborne Abbey on 9 June 2012 by Ex Cathedra, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore. The work was commissioned to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer Music Society of Dorset, founded by its President and Artistic Director, Dione Digby, in 1963. The brief was to provide a large-scale, celebratory work, reflecting the passage of time and fifty years of music-making. The seed that set my creative juices flowing was the text which Lady Digby suggested as a possible starting point—the well-known passage from Ecclesiastes which I have used for the opening Processional. This lovely, profoundly human text provided the four key themes which permeate the whole work: times; seasons; love; dance.

The diurnal cycle of the hours and the annual cycle of the seasons are firm favourites with poets, offering as they do rich possibilities for metaphor. I decided to conflate the two cycles to make a four-part structure: Spring Morning; Summer Noon; Autumn Evening; Winter Night, and to characterize each with a different solo voice: soprano; tenor; alto; bass. The overall design is completed by a Prologue and an Epilogue, with different texts but in which the underlying depiction of sunrise by the orchestra and largely wordless choir is identical, so bringing us musically full circle. There are also two additional/optional ‘movements’—‘Times and Seasons’ which the choir sings at the start while entering in procession through the audience, and an After-dance, ‘Proper Exercise’ (more of which below).

I spent a considerable time researching and assembling the text, whittling down over one hundred poems to the final choice of twenty-nine, drawn from a wide variety of sources ranging from Ovid to Aphra Behn. The choice was made not just by the suitability of the texts, but also by how they speak to each other. I followed my usual practice of taking the poems for a walk, listening to their melodies and rhythms, and learning how they might dance. Apart from the text, however, the main influences on the music of A Time to Dance were Shakespeare, Bach and Skidmore.

This work is a culmination of seven years close association with Jeffrey Skidmore and his choir Ex Cathedra, during which they have given many premieres and recorded a double-album of my music (‘Shared Ground’). But just as valuable to me has been the time I have spent sitting in on rehearsals. Their wonderful sound is now deeply ingrained in my mind, so that the music I compose for the choir and for the vocal soloists drawn from its ranks is very much of them and for them. I have learned a great deal from Jeffrey’s inspired and brilliantly accomplished music-making. For example, it was his use of spatial effects in a concert of Vivaldi that gave me the idea for similar deployment of my trumpeters in A Time to Dance—left and right for the cock-crow fanfares cued by Edward Thomas’s words in No 2; distantly spaced for the echo effects of No 5; and all three together offstage in No 19 to represent the radiance of the Evening Star.

The influence of Bach arose from the simple fact that the new work was to be premiered alongside a performance of Bach’s Magnificat, and so it was a given that I would compose for the same forces: soloists, choir, and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes (each doubling on oboe d’amore), bassoon, three trumpets, timpani, strings and a small ‘continuo’ organ. The only change I made was for the percussionist to put aside Bach’s timpani in favour of a pair of handbells to toll the passing hours, and an array of unpitched instruments to add a dash of colour where appropriate (such as the obbligato parts for desk bell, washboard and dinner gong in No 16). Composing for ‘period instruments’ was a fascinating challenge (most noticeable in the valveless trumpets with their limited range of notes), and I am most grateful to the members of the Ex Cathedra Baroque Ensemble for their advice.

The music of A Time to Dance is designed so that it can be played either on modern instruments or (as in this recording) on period instruments. But apart from the instrumentation I have not made any borrowings from Bach, although I have done something to which he himself was partial—borrowing from Vivaldi, as you may hear on four pertinent (not to say seasonable) occasions, some more obvious than others. I love how Bach’s music dances and I hope that mine does too, although where Bach might move to the rhythms of the gavotte, minuet or bourée, mine are more likely to be milonga, kuda lumping or disco.

One of the things I most enjoy about performances at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s Bankside is that when the play is over, the actors and musicians cap it with a celebratory after-dance or ‘jig’ in the Shakespearean tradition—a wonderful way of bringing performers and audience together in a communal letting-down-of-the-hair. After spending fifty minutes singing about dance, I thought it would be fun to have my singers lay down their music scores (I ensure they have to do this by giving them some hand-clapping to do), and actually dance. My After-dance sets words by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Davies, in which the very creation of the world itself is accomplished through dance (and, of course music). (Alec Roth)

MAX RICHTER Sleep

Hailed as the most influential composer of his generation, electro-acoustic polymath Max Richter defies definition: composer he may be, but he is also pianist, producer, remixer, and collaborator, and beyond argument one of the most prolific of contemporary musical artists.

Inspired equally by Bach, punk rock and ambient electronica, Richter’s sonic world blends a formal classical training (he graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, and was a pupil of renowned composer Luciano Berio) with modern technology. His unique and distinctive brand of heartbroken melodicism bridges the minimalist greats with pioneering electronics and the contemporary digital music production multiverse. Time Out has remarked on the ‘overwhelming emotional power’ of his work, the New Statesman has noted its ‘astonishing depth and beauty’ while Classic FM and Pitchfork have called it ‘stunning’ and The Guardian ‘languorously transcendent’.

Over the years Richter has become best known for his genre defining and highly influential solo albums which have given rise to and are seen as ‘landmarks’ (The Independent, Pitchfork) of the ever burgeoning ‘neo- classical’ movement, but his monumental collaborative output also encompasses concert music, operas, ballets, art and video installations, and multiple film, theatre and television scores.

The over 50 films featuring Max’s work and specifically written scores include Ari Folman’s multiple award-winning and devastating critique of war, Waltz with Bashir (for which Max was awarded the European Film Prize), Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Damon Lindelof ’s first television project post-LOST, HBO’s The Leftovers. Theatre productions include Alan Cumming’s triumphant solo version of Macbeth on Broadway, and the National Theatre of Scotland’s internationally lauded Black Watch. Ballets include his many collaborative ventures with maverick Royal Ballet resident choreographer Wayne McGregor, with his works also being used by, amongst others, The Joffrey Ballet, Nederlands Dans Teatre, Lucinda Childs, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Dutch National Ballet, Dresden Semper Oper, Ballet du Rhin, Northern Ballet.

Art Collaborations include work with photographer Darren Almond at the White Cube, with Julian Opie on McGregor’s ballet INFRA, and with visual art collective Random International on Rain Room at the Barbican and MoMA, and Future Self at Lunds Konsthall in Sweden.

Signed as an exclusive artist to Deutsche Grammophon, Max Richter’s projects for 2015 include his new solo album following on from his bestselling ‘Recomposed: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons’ for which he received the ECHO Klassik Award in 2013. In 2015 Max will also see the premiere of Woolf Works his new full length ballet for choreographer Wayne McGregor and The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden on the life and works of Virginia Woolf, which The Independent noted ‘looks set to be one of the most ambitious shows of the year’ and The Guardian forecasted to be ‘one of the highlights’ of the Opera House Season.

. . . the music here is, as expected, played largo and is clarified to the point where it's thoroughly cleansing, plus the string quintet pieces approach bass-heavy ambience in a beautifully organic way . . . This is a landmark project . . . much of which succeeds in being thoroughly bewitching.

Record Review / Phil Smith, Record Collector (London) 

. . . these are lush, glacially-paced movements that continually glide in and out of focus like fragments of half-remembered dreams. The aptly-titled "Dream 3", "Dream 8" and "Dream 13" form the spine of the album and sound exactly as you would imagine; all delicate piano and ponderous violin . . . [the claustrophobia of "Space"] makes for the most arresting listening on the album . . .

Record Review / James F. Thompson, Crack Magazine (London)