Hugh Wood's first two string quartets are compact. The second is in a single movement. The first is a vivid essay in Schoenbergian tension, scampering expansions and sinister urgency. The Second is even more extreme in its avant-garde embrace. Mordant attack and sudden pizzicato expostulations blaze their way through this work without strangling opportunities for eerie asides, shuddering revelation and moments of strained lyricism. There are three other Wood quartets (1978, 1993, 2001). April Cantelo cannot be excelled in these songs. The witty way she points the words 'and tilted hind hooves' is matched by the bursting rhetorical conflagration and blast of the Pennines in April. These three songs are from Ted Hughes’ early collections The Hawk in the Rain and Lupercal. These are not conventional settings - this is after all Hugh Wood - but it is difficult to imagine them set to other music. The ringing operatic confidence of Wood’s Muir songs could hardly be projected with more volatile assurance than they receive from Paul Hamburger and April Cantelo. For an exemplary listening experience try The Bird which: an explosion of admiration veering over the precipice into ecstasy.

The second disc starts with two works by Rainier. Here we are recognisably in the same realm as Wood's Second Quartet - just a little further North. Intriguingly, though, Quanta does not deny the singing core of the oboe. One thinks in this work of Crosse's Ariadne and even of Malcolm Arnold's Oboe Concerto although the carapace is dissonant. Much the same can be said of the usually sterner format of the String Trio which ends with magical held-notes, arresting time. We then arrive at four cello and piano works. The Berkeley Duo represents a return to tonality even if a full engagement is constrained by Berkeley's natural reserve. The Fricker sonata in three movements and was written at Walton's home in Ischia. Walton is the dedicatee. It is a work of turbulent severity, exciting in the first and riptide third movements and otherwise statuesque in the manner of Hughes' Horses and lyrically expressive. Ten years after the Fricker comes Aberdonian, Martin Dalby's Variations. These are angular in the manner of Wood and Rainier. McCabe's Partita is stern and grave. It is again in the idiom of the times - the mid-1960s - yet with some lyrical 'give' as at 4:50.

The recording of the cello and piano works is excellent and compares favourably with the Rainier in terms of background ‘burble’.

The words of the sung poems are printed in the booklet. Overall a fascinating collection bound to stir memories or impressions from first time discovery but a satisfying listening experience even if you are encountering these iconic recordings for the first time.

Rob Barnett MusicWeb-international.com

For more information please click on the disc cover or catalogue number

	REAM.1103 Ernest John Moeran - Theme and Variations etc., Gordon Jacob - Piano Sonata Iris Loveridge, piano There was a group of young musicians between the wars who shed, if not sweetness and light, at any rate a highly spectacular incandescence of their own. Their gloriously bellicose opinions, quarrels and litigations, concerts and cosmopolitan compositions produced a pyrotechnical display that, in these days, leaves a nostalgic glow, like the memory of a splendid sunset in the gloom of night. Bernard van Dieren, Constant Lambert, Peter Warlock, Cecil Gray, with, on the fringes, William Walton and the Sitwells; and through most of their memoires, letters, and essays moves Ernest John Moeran. There is a photograph of a typical group that I have in mind - Lambert and Warlock sitting on a garden bench, Lambert shrewd and alert, Warlock smiling with diabolical malice at some ghastly private joke, near them Hal Collins, the Maori painter whose real name was Te Akau, whose grandmother was a cannibal, and who wrote (with assistance) one small charming song, and got it published, moreover, and, standing in the middle distance, pipe in hand, E. J. Moeran.
	REAM.1107 Alan Rawsthorne, Bernard Stevens - Piano Works James Gibb, piano Alan Rawsthorne (1905 - 1971) was one of the most distinctive British composers of his generation. His output has been celebrated chiefly for orchestral works, including three impressive symphonies, and a significant volume of chamber and instrumental music. He was also a fine pianist, winning a prize whilst he was a third year student at the Royal Manchester (now Royal Northern) College of Music and going on to study in Poland in the summer of 1930 with Busoni’s pupil Egon Petri. Though his most substantial and often performed keyboard works are those he wrote for piano and other instruments, such as the two piano concertos, the Quintet for piano and wind and Violin Sonata, he also produced a number of accomplished pieces for solo piano, most of which, including the three works featured on this disc, date from the first half of his career - a notable exception being the technically challenging Ballade of 1967, an impressive coda to his considerable achievements in the medium.
	REAM.2104 Arnold Bax - Sonata for Cello and Piano etc., Gordon Jacob - Divertimento for Solo Cello etc. Florence Hooton, cello, Wilfrid Parry, piano ... a striking simplicity of texture, developed in his later years, revealed the essential Englishman in Bax’s last works - simple, sensuous and passionate, the Violin Concerto and the Legend-Sonata, not to mention Morning Song, belong in the true English tradition ...
	REAM.2105 York Bowen, Franz Reizenstein - Works for Piano York Bowen, piano, Franz Reizenstein, piano Bowen did much to extend the repertoire of the viola, but the piano dominated his output to a remarkable degree for a 20th century British composer. Sorabji described the 24 Preludes (1938) as "the finest English piano music written in our time".
	REAM.2106 Michael Tippett, Iain Hamilton, William Wordsworth - Works for Piano Margaret Kitchin, piano Pianist Margaret Kitchin (1914-2008) was a child prodigy who later specialised in modern and contemporary music, making BBC broadcasts of this repertoire for over 20 years. She championed many British composers, including Peter Racine Fricker, Iain Hamilton, Elizabeth Lutyens, Thea Musgrave, Alexander Goehr, Priaulx Rainier, Humphrey Searle, Alan Bush, Richard Rodney Bennett and Michael Tippett, whose Second Piano Sonata is dedicated to her. The first of her few commercial recordings consisted of the Tippett and Hamilton sonatas presented here, originally released on a Lyrita LP in 1959.
	REAM.2108 John White, Alun Hoddinott - Works for Piano Colin Kingsley, piano (White), Valerie Tryon, piano (Hoddinott) To date John White has written 166 piano sonatas, 3 operas, 26 symphonies, music for the stage, including commissions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, as well countless scores for vocal and chamber ensembles, electronics and percussion. Cheerfully eclectic, his style exploits various acknowledged influences, among them fellow pianists in his repertoire as a recitalist, such as Satie, Alkan, Schumann, Busoni, Liszt, Rakhmaninov, Sorabji, Scriabin and Medtner; these composers are present in spirit only - there are no direct quotations or attempts at pastiche ...
	REAM.2109 Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Benjamin - Works for Piano Colin Horsley, piano (Berkeley), Lamar Crowson, piano (Benjamin) One of the most significant British composers of his generation, Lennox Berkeley (1903 - 1989) had a distinctive refined and Gallic style, befitting an ex-pupil of Nadia Boulanger. In his most characteristic works, however, taste and restraint never precludes depth of feeling and intensity of expression. His individual blend of wit, elegance and exuberance is arguably at its most compelling in the intimate medium of chamber music ...
	REAM.2110 Edward MacDowell and Paula Hindemith - Works for Piano Sheila Randell, Piano These are fascinating first appearances, after half a century, of mono recordings made in the early days of the LP but never previously issued in any form. Of the four piano sonatas tow are very much nineteenth century romantic and two are from 1936 alongside a 1922 dance suite. It is a diverse mix and one which only coheres around the performer rather than any unity of style. These projects from 1958 were never issued on LP and they appear on CD now for the first time.
	REAM.2111 French and Brazilian Piano Music Elizabeth Powell, Piano
	REAM.3112 John Ireland - The Piano Music Alan Rowlands I first heard the name of John Ireland from my father, who knew some of his songs and had broadcast Twilight Night with the choral group he conducted in Swansea before the War. At that time a great family friend was the composer Percy Turnbull and it was he who later introduced me to Ireland’s piano music, which I immediately fell in love with. Percy had been with Ireland in his beloved Channel Islands in 1940 - he could imitate his distinctively querulous voice and regaled us with many stories. Ireland had wanted to settle on Guernsey but was forced to leave at 24 hours’ notice that June owing to the imminence of the German invasion. He, John Longmire and Turnbull had managed to get on one of the last boats and endured a hazardous journey to Weymouth, where the composer arrived in a highly nervous state, the unfinished manuscript of Sarnia among his few possessions. Percy told me that Longmire went to the Captain and said of Ireland, "he's mad, you know", thereby enabling the composer to leave the boat ahead of the normal disembarkation procedures ...; Alan Rowlands
	REAM.3113 Arnold Bax - The Piano Music Iris Loveridge, piano The piano music of Arnold Bax stands a little apart from the rest of modern English music for the medium. This latter usually tends to be spare, wistful, predominantly chordal, small in scale, the equivalent of ‘Georgian’ poetry. The very distinguished piano music of John Ireland is perhaps the best and most typical, and something of Ireland’s spirit, and much of his letter, haunts a good deal of minor English piano music. He is a safer model than the very individual and
	SRCD.200 Malcolm Arnold - Symphony No.4 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Arnold, conductor
	SRCD.201 Malcolm Arnold - English, Irish, Scottish & Cornish Dances etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Arnold, conductor
	SRCD.202 Edmund Rubbra - Symphony Nos. 3 & 4 etc. Philharmonia Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor
	SRCD.203 Arnold Cooke - Symphony No. 1, Concerto in D for string orch., Jabez and the Devil - Suite London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Writing in the journal Musical Opinion in 1936, Havergal Brian hailed Arnold Cooke as one of the most promising young British composers of his time - and this on the basis of a few early chamber and orchestral works and the cantata Holderneth (1934), all of them at that time unpublished. In the ensuing years Cooke amply fulfilled the promise that Brian saw in him.Yet he never sought the limelight: he went on to create a substantial body of dramatic, orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works whose quality is ever consistent and whose expressive impulses are almost always purely musical. Brian’s comparison of Cooke with Brahms, which must have seemed odd in 1936, now appears a prescient insight into the essential nature of this dedicated and craftsmanly composer.
	SRCD.204 William Sterndale Bennett - Piano Concerto Nos. 1 & 3 etc. Malcolm Binns, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.205 William Sterndale Bennett - Piano Concerto Nos. 2 & 5 etc. Malcolm Binns, piano, Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.206 William Sterndale Bennett - Symphony in G minor, Overtures London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Schumann, with whom Bennett would often "drink a bottle of porter", noted the "remarkable family resemblance" in Bennett's music to that of Mendelssohn's – "the same beauty of form, poetic depth yet clearness, and ideal purity, the same outwardly satisfying impression, – but with a difference."
	SRCD.207 William Wordsworth - Symphony Nos. 2 & 3 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.208 William Hurlstone - Variations on an Original Theme, The Magic Mirror etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.209 Gustav Holst - The Cotswolds Symphony, Indra, Dances from The Morning of the Year etc. Lorraine McAslan, violin, Alexander Baillie, cello, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor
	SRCD.210 Gustav Holst - Walt Whitman, Suite de Ballet, A Hampshire Suite, A Moorside Suite etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.211 Vaughan Williams - Piano Concerto John Foulds - Dynamic Triptych Howard Shelley, piano, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor
	SRCD.212 John Foulds - Hellas, Three Mantras etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor
	SRCD.213 Eric Coates - The Three Men, Dancing Nights, Two Symphonic Rhapsodies, The Enchanted Garden etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor
	SRCD.214 Box of Delights - British Light Music Gems London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Joly, conductor
	SRCD.215 Constant Lambert - Pomona, Music for Orchestra, Romeo and Juliet, King Pest English Chamber Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Joly, conductor Constant Lambert was a man of outstandingly wide cultural range, a man as well-informed about painting and literature as about music. For this reason his contribution to the development of what is now the Royal Ballet proved invaluable.A triumvirate composed of Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Lambert founded the company, then called the Vic-Wells Ballet, in 1931, and Lambert was its Musical Director and principal conductor for sixteen years. He resigned in 1947, but soon returned as Artistic Director and guest conductor. He also enjoyed a distinguished career as a conductor in the concert hall. His output as a composer was comparatively small — just over twenty mature works — but almost always of high calibre.
	SRCD.216 Orchestrations by Sir Henry Wood (1869 - 1944) London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.219 Charles Villiers Stanford - Irish Rhapsody No.4, Piano Concerto No.2 etc. Malcolm Binns, piano, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.220 Hubert Parry - An English Suite, Lady Radnor’s Suite etc. London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.221 Edward Elgar - Symphonies 1 & 2 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor Elgar’s two symphonies have a special place in English musical history. When they were first played they towered head and shoulders - in sheer technique, let alone content - above previous symphonic offerings by British composers. Today when we have the magnificent symphonies of Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bax, Rubbra, Britten and others to set beside them, they still stand apart, having already achieved the status of classics. Their mastery may have been equalled - it has not been surpassed.
	SRCD.222 Gustav Holst - A Somerset Rhapsody, Beni Mora, Japanese Suite etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.223 Gustav Holst - Ballet Music from The Golden Goose, Double Concerto for two violins, Lyric Movement for viola etc. William Bennett, flute, Peter Graeme, oboe, Cecil Aronowitz, viola, Emmanuel Hurwitz and Kenneth Sillito, violins, English Chamber Orchestra, Imogen Holst, conductor
	SRCD.224 William Walton - The Quest, Sinfonia Concertante etc. London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir William Walton, conductor
	SRCD.225 Arthur Bliss - Mêlée Fantasque, Serenade for Orchestra and Baritone etc. Rae Woodland, soprano, John Shirley-Quirk, baritone, London Symphony Orchestra, LSO Wind and Brass Ensemble, Ambrosian Singers, Sir Arthur Bliss, conductor, Brian Priestman, conductor, Philip Ledger, conductor
	SRCD.226 Lennox Berkeley - Divertimento, Symphony No.3 etc. Roger Winfield, oboe, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Lennox Berkeley, conductor
	SRCD.227 William Alwyn - Symphony Nos. 1 & 4 London Philharmonic Orchestra, William Alwyn, conductor
	SRCD.228 William Alwyn - Symphony Nos. 2, 3 & 5 London Philharmonic Orchestra, William Alwyn, conductor
	SRCD.229 William Alwyn - The Magic Island, Sinfonietta for Strings etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, William Alwyn, conductor
	SRCD.230 William Alwyn - Concerto Grosso No.2, Autumn Legend, Lyra Angelica Osian Ellis, harp, Geoffrey Browne, cor anglais, London Philharmonic Orchestra, William Alwyn, conductor
	SRCD.2309 Anthology of English Song 1530 - 1790 These recordings took place as part of a British Council-funded scheme to produce a series of recordings surveying British song from its earliest days to the 1970s. For whatever reason this Decca-engineered project never got past the era reflected in this anthology. There will be stylistic shocks along the way. After all, performance practice in this repertoire has moved on – several times – over the last three decades. That said this is admirable and tasteful singing – not so tasteful that it lacks charm, fear, seduction, even a cheeky leer. Listen to the rough start of Byrd's Out of the Orient Skies. This is a song in which, incidentally, one can hear foreshadowings of Herbert Howells' King David. All the songs are sung with light-imbued clarion tone. Going by these results no pains or expense were spared in this Decca-coordinated endeavour. The songs are of a piece, being in the case of the first disc predominantly of a grave or melancholic beauty. The second disc spreads the range. Purcell's floridly rhetorical settings appear with surprisingly modern sounding instrumental accompaniment. This is not guaranteed to beguile Lyrita’s usual audience. However those who hanker after a golden age of British singing, before hints of the contrived and the precious began to invade will want this set. Rob Barnett MusicWeb-international.com
	SRCD.231 Arnold Bax - The Garden of Fand, Tintagel, November Woods etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.232 Arnold Bax - Symphony Nos. 1 & 7 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, conductor, Raymond Leppard, conductor
	SRCD.233 Arnold Bax - Symphony Nos. 2 & 5 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, conductor, Raymond Leppard, conductor
	SRCD.234 Edmund Rubbra - Symphony Nos. 6 & 8 etc. Rohan De Saram, cello, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Vernon Handley, conductor
	SRCD.235 Edmund Rubbra - Symphony Nos. 2 & 7 etc. New Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.236 Gerald Finzi - Concertos for Clarinet and for Cello John Denman, clarinet, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, cello, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor
	SRCD.237 Gerald Finzi - Music for Love's Labour's Lost, Let Us Garlands Bring etc. John Carol Case, baritone , Ian Partridge, tenor , Jane Manning, soprano , John Noble, baritone , John Alldis Choir , Royal Philharmonic Orchestra , New Philharmonia Orchestra , Vernon Handley, conductor In 1946 Noel Iliff was to produce Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost for the BBC Home Service. His wife, Simona Pakenham, was adapting it. She was musician enough to be writing a book on Vaughan Williams, and to have recognized Finzi's gifts. He agreed to compose incidental music for sixteen players. As he was a slow worker, he was shocked to find he had only three weeks. But "I rather wanted to do it," he wrote to a friend, "just to show myself that I could do it."
	SRCD.238 Patrick Hadley - The Trees so High, Gerald Finzi - Intimations of Immortality Thomas Allen, baritone, Ian Partridge, tenor, Guildford Philharmonic Choir, New Philharmonia Orchestra (Hadley), Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra (Finzi), Vernon Handley, conductor
	SRCD.239 Gerald Finzi - Grand Fantasia & Toccata, Eclogue, Nocturne etc. Rodney Friend, solo violin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Adrian Boult, conductor, Peter Katin, piano, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor
	SRCD.240 John Ireland - Tritons, Mai-Dun, A London Overture, The Overlanders Suite etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.241 John Ireland - Piano Concerto, These Things Shall Be, Legend etc. Eric Parkin, piano, John Carol Case, baritone London Philharmonic Orchestra (leader Rodney Friend), London Philharmonic Choir (chorus master Frederic Jackson), Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.242 Boult conducts Bridge & Ireland London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor Recordings issued in the last thirty years have given us the much-needed chance to get to know some of Frank Bridge’s more radical later works — works which show an exploring, often elusive and sometimes disturbingly introspective musical mind. Oration, Phantasm, the 3rd and 4th string quartets, and the piano and violin sonatas are examples, but there are others.
	SRCD.243 Frank Bridge - Dance Rhapsody, Allegro Moderato for string orchestra etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.244 Frank Bridge - Oration, Phantasm Julian Lloyd Webber, cello, Peter Wallfisch, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Oration (1930) and Phantasm (1931) were Frank Bridge’s most substantial orchestral works and his only concertos. By the time of their composition Bridge was in his early 50s and at the height of his creative powers. With a string of powerful chamber works behind him it might be expected that his reputation would also have been soaring. However these chamber pieces – Piano Sonata, Third Quartet, Rhapsody Trio and Piano Trio – appeared to be out of step with current conservative fashions in British musical taste. The composer could barely conceal the hurt he felt in the savaging he received at the hands of some music critics – remarks such as "the composer is bartering a noble birthright for less than a mess of pottage" (The Musical Times, May 1930, p.42). He began to rely for performances of his new radical work on the patronage of the American Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to whom the chamber works and the Rhapsody Phantasm were dedicated ...
	SRCD.245 Boult conducts Butterworth, Warlock, Hadley, Howells London Philharmonic Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert Downes, viola, Desmond Bradley & Gillian Eastwood violins, Albert Cayzer, viola, Norman Jones cello, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor The reputation of George Butterworth (1885-1916) as a composer of great promise whose life was tragically cut short on the Somme by a sniper’s bullet, rests on a handful of works: the orchestral pieces on this disc and some songs, chiefly settings of A E Housman and W E Henley ...
	SRCD.246 Eric Coates - Suites: Summer Days, From Meadow to Mayfair, Three Elizabeths etc. & Marches by Grainger, Delius, Holst etc. New Philharmonia Orchestra , London Philharmonic Orchestra , Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.247 Ernest John Moeran - Sinfonietta, Symphony in G minor, Overture for a Masque London Philharmonic Orchestra (leader Rodney Friend), New Philharmonia Orchestra (leader Desmond Bradley), Sir Adrian Boult, conductor The great conductor of the Hallé, Sir Hamilton Harty, requested a symphony from Ernest John Moeran in 1926: with rare modesty he declined, feeling that he was not yet prepared to tackle the symphonic manner. A decade later the composer commenced the task. The critical assessment described the new work as formally undecided – a remark levelled at Beethoven, Brahms, Tschaikowski, Dvorak, Elgar and others in their time – and complained that the material was imperfectly disciplined. Strange. lt may be argued that the Moeran Symphony is among the five or six most original compositions in this genre to appear between the two world wars ...
	SRCD.248 Ernest John Moeran - Violin Concerto, Rhapsody for Piano & Orchestra etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor (Rhapsody No. 2), John Georgiadis, violin, London Symphony Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor (Violin Concerto), John McCabe, piano, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor (Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra) Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950), still the least-known significant English composer of his generation, composed in his prime three large-scale works with orchestra, a symphony (1937), a violin concerto (1942) and a cello concerto (1945). Part of Moeran’s neglect may perhaps be attributed to his derivative musical style. Yet the positive individuality of Moeran’s music, which grew in strength as he became older and is finally shorn of all props in the masterly cello concerto, overrides these derivations in nearly all his works. He is a composer with something to say and an unwavering judgment about the way in which it must be said.
	SRCD.249 Lennox Berkeley - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Lennox Randal (Francis) Berkeley was born at Sunningwell Plain, near Oxford, on 12 May 1903, into an aristocratic family. He attended Lynam’s (later the Dragon School), Oxford, Gresham’s School, Holt, and St George’s School, Harpenden, where he had his first work performed. He went up to Merton College, Oxford, to read French, Old French and Philology and he rowed. He was cox of the Merton VIII for three years but cannot have taken his studies seriously since he left with a fourth class degree in 1926. He had hardly got into his stride as a composer in his Oxford years but whilst there he became the first to set Auden’s poetry (two songs now lost), was intrigued by early music and wrote for its instruments, such as the harpsichord owned and played by his flatmate, Vere Pilkington, and the conductor Anthony Bernard started to give the first of several performances of his music with the London Chamber Orchestra.
	SRCD.250 Lennox Berkeley - Piano Concerto in B flat, Concerto for Two Pianos David Wilde, piano, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, Garth Beckett & Boyd McDonald, pianos, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor Sir Lennox Berkeley needs little introduction as one of the leading British composers of the generation of Walton and Tippett. His output for the piano in solos, duos, concertos and chamber music is unrivalled in the British twentieth century scene.
	SRCD.251 Cyril Scott - Piano Concerto Nos. 1 & 2, Early One Morning John Ogdon, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Herrmann, conductor
	SRCD.252 Geoffrey Bush - Symphony Nos. 1 & 2 (The Guildford) etc. New Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, Barry Wordsworth, conductor
	SRCD.253 Thea Musgrave - Concertos for Orchestra, Clarinet, Horn, Piano Music etc. Gervase de Peyer, clarinet, Barry Tuckwell, horn, Thea Musgrave, piano, Malcolm Williamson, piano, Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gibson, London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar, Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Thea Musgrave Like many composers of her generation in Britain – the generation that first began to attract notice in the middle 1950s – Thea Musgrave came of age musically in that 'rite of passage' which involved acknowledging the primary importance of Bartók and the Second Viennese School, and thus the rejection of tonality as traditionally conceived, along with its traditional expressive and form-building functions. This was a step with momentous consequences for any composer: such new freedoms immediately create concomitant new responsibilities, and often acute problems. Perhaps the central issue – and the one which seems to have dominated and focussed Musgrave’s whole artistic progress to a greater degree than most of her contemporaries – was the need to discover new means of dramatizing the structure and musical argument of each work, means that could replace the drama and dynamism inherent in the workings of traditional tonality.
	SRCD.254 Arthur Bliss - Music For Strings, Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, A Prayer to the Infant Jesus City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Hugo Rignold, conductor, Ambrosian Singers, Philip Ledger, conductor I have often been told that I am a ‘romantic’ composer as though that carried in these days some deprecatory significance. I have not the remotest idea of what is implied by that definition, since the very wish to create is a romantic urge, and music the romantic art par excellence. Sir Arthur Bliss
	SRCD.255 Alan Rawsthorne - Piano Concertos 1 & 2, Symphonic Studies, Overture 'Street Corner' London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir John Pritchard, conductor, Malcolm Binns, piano, London Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Alan Rawsthorne was born in 1905, the same year as Michael Tippett and Constant Lambert – in retrospect, one might say, a remarkable year for British music. His fellow Lancastrian,William Walton, who was, with Lambert, his closest professional friend, was three years his senior. But unlike them Rawsthorne was a late starter in music. He flirted with dentistry and architecture before becoming a student at the Royal Manchester College of Music and not until he was thirty did he settle in London and seriously attempt to make a living out of composition (and there were less enticements and encouragements in the way of commissions in those days than exist now) ...
	SRCD.256 Rawsthorne, Berkeley, Bush - Chamber Music The Music Group of London, Hugh Bean, violin, Eileen Croxford, cello, David Parkhouse, piano, with Frances Routh, violin , Christopher Wellington, viola , Jack Brymer, clarinet , Alan Civil, horn , Alan Bush, piano , Members of the Aeolian Quartet , Sydney Humphreys, violin, Margaret Major, viola, Derek Simpson, cello;
	SRCD.257 Rawsthorne & Tippett - Divertimentos, Britten, Arnold & Berkeley - Sinfoniettas English Chamber Orchestra, Norman Del Mar conductor, London Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor In considering these works for chamber orchestra by twentieth-century British composers, it is worth noting that the Elgar - Vaughan Williams generation wrote nothing in these forms. There is a practical reason for this. The growth of the virtuoso chamber orchestra in Britain is a comparatively recent occurrence. Elgar's so-called salon music was written for amateur groups, in most cases, or for the theatre orchestras which then abounded, but there were no high-standard professional ensembles in the area between such bodies as Ivan Caryll's Orchestra and the big symphony orchestras. In our time, with the existence of the English Chamber Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, the London Mozart Players, the Manchester Camerata and many more,works such as are here recorded receive the accomplished, polished performances which are their due.
	SRCD.259 Gordon Crosse - Ariadne Op. 31, Changes Op. 17 Sarah Francis, oboe, London Symphony Orchestra Ensemble, Michael Lankester, conductor, Jennifer Vyvyan, soprano, John Shirley-Quirk, baritone, Orpington Junior Singers, Highgate School for Boys Choir, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Norman Del Mar, conductor Ariadne was first performed, with outstanding success, at the Cheltenham International Festival on 11 July 1972 by Sarah Francis and Contrapuncti conducted by Michael Lankester. The present recording was made in Kingsway Hall, London, immediately following a performance given with members of the London Symphony Orchestra at a BBC Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall in August 1974. Ariadne has had a considerable number of performances, many of them with Sarah Francis as soloist, and her name stands at the head of the score as dedicatee.
	SRCD.264 Alexander Goehr - Little Symphony, String Quartet No. 2, Piano Trio London Symphony Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Allegri Quartet, Hugh Maguire, David Roth, Patrick Ireland, Bruno Schrecker, Orion Trio, Ian Brown, Peter Thomas, Sharon McKinley "I am convinced that good music survives and that, although it may take a long time to establish itself with the larger musical public, eventually this does happen". Since Alexander Goehr made this statement in British Composers in Interview (Faber, 1963), he has become one of the most distinguished composers of his generation. He undoubtedly writes ‘good music’ that is built to last, but the ‘larger musical public’ he referred to have, as yet, been afforded too few opportunities to get to know his refined and expertly crafted works ...
	SRCD.265 Lutyens - Quincunx, And Suddenly it's Evening - Bedford - Music for Albion Moonlight Josephine Nendick, soprano, John Shirley-Quirk, baritone, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Herbert Handt, tenor / director, Members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jane Manning, soprano, Members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Carewe, conductor Elisabeth Lutyens was a pioneer in British music, both as a woman composer and as a serialist. Her exceptional prolificacy was achieved largely whilst raising four children and supporting her mostly unemployed husband. She is habitually described as a 'miniaturist', but, concise though many of her works are, and frequently involving chamber forces, she also handled a large orchestra expertly and wrote effectively on a substantial scale, as evidenced by the masterly Quincunx, written between October 1959 and February 1960 ...
	SRCD.266 William Baines, E. J. Moeran - Piano Music Eric Parkin, piano Although Baines tried his hand at most forms of composition, producing in his teens a massive symphony and copious chamber and vocal works, the piano being always accessible remained his natural medium of expression. He wrote to please himself, happily free of that need to feel justified in the eyes of critics, public and posterity which is the bane of young composers. His music can verge on banality and then as effortlessly touch the sublime with a candour some contemporaries found hard to accept: nobody else, save perhaps Alkan, could have written such disparate pieces as the First and Third Preludes on the very same day ...
	SRCD.267 Nicholas Maw - Scenes and Arias, Anthony Milner - Salutatio Angelica Jane Manning, soprano, Anne Howells, mezzo-soprano, Norma Proctor, contralto, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Alfreda Hodgson, contralto, Felicity Palmer, soprano, RobertTear, tenor, London Sinfonietta & Chorus, David Atherton, conductor Music for voice has always been an important component of Maw’s creative output. He first came to notice with a Nocturne for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, and it was the thrilling Scenes and Arias for three female voices and large orchestra that unmistakably announced the arrival of a strong new personality in British music.
	SRCD.269 Sir Granville Bantock, Josef Holbrooke, Cyril Rootham - Orchestral Works Philharmonia Orchestra Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor Both Cyril Bradley Rootham and Josef Holbrooke worked under handicaps, one of which they shared. Why is most of their music unfamiliar to listeners who did not hear it before the war? The answer incurs knowledge of a historical phenomenon.VaughanWilliams was born in 1872, only six years after Strauss and Sibelius, and eight after Debussy. Within ten years all the following were born: Holst, Ravel, Ireland, Bax, Bartok, Stravinsky, and the two composers who now concern us.As in the sixteenth century a whole range of musical peaks and foothills rose almost within a decade. To change the metaphor, it must be stimulating for composers to find themselves within a galaxy, but fromsome of themmust perforce be witheld the wider recognition theymight have earned if they had shone alone, not among brilliantly distinctive stars.
	SRCD.270 Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Hubert Parry - Works for Chorus and Orchestra Teresa Cahill, soprano, The Bach Choir / Royal College of Music Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir David Willcocks, conductor, Sheila Armstrong, soprano, London Symphony Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor The Sons of Light was commissioned for The Schools Music Association. Bernard Shore, the great viola player who had become one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, approached RVW early in 1950, asking him to write a choral work for young singers who would have, at the first performance, the excitement and pleasure of being accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.
	SRCD.274 Roberto Gerhard - Symphony No. 4 'New York', Violin Concerto Yfrah Neaman, violin, B.B.C Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, conductor
	SRCD.275 Richard Rodney Bennett - Piano Concerto, Five Studies for Piano, Capriccio for Piano Duet, Commedia IV Stephen Kovacevich, piano, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Alexander Gibson, conductor, Richard Rodney Bennett, piano, Richard Rodney Bennett & Thea Musgrave, piano, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble
	SRCD.276 Peter Racine Fricker, David Morgan, Don Banks - Violin Concertos Yfrah Neaman, violin (Fricker, Banks), Erich Gruenberg, violin (Morgan), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor (Fricker, Banks), Vernon Handley, conductor (Morgan)
	SRCD.280 Malcolm Williamson - Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, Piano Concerto No. 3, Sonata for Two Pianos Malcolm Williamson, organ (The Rushworth & Dreaper organ of Guildford Cathedral), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor, Malcolm Williamson, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Dommett, conductor, Malcolm Williamson & Richard Rodney Bennett, pianos My first piano concerto appeared at Cheltenham in 1958 and travelled to the Albert Hall for the 1959 Proms. The critical censure that it received caused me to draw into myself and to write a Sinfonia Concertante with solo piano, trumpet trio and string orchestra. This 12-minute work was fully two years in the writing and the problems of the concerto style were at the front of my mind during that period. By chance I heard of a competition in Western Australia at the end of 1960 for a concerto for piano and strings, and the labour pains of the Sinfonia Concertante generated the impulse to write in some eight days a work which won this competition and came to be my second piano concerto. The next year I had to set aside the Sinfonia Concertante once again. Sir William Glock had invited me to write an organ concerto for the Proms and the Australian Broadcasting Commission asked for a full-scale piano concerto, the third. The organ concerto was a labour of love. It was written in honour of Sir Adrian Boult, who conducted the first performance. The first performance of the third piano concerto was given by John Ogdon with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Joseph Post, and I decided to dedicate the work to this astonishing and fine pianist. Sir Adrian Boult in Europe and Leonard Dommett in Australia have guided me as soloist through performances of both concerti.
	SRCD.281 Malcolm Williamson - Elevamini, Symphony No. 1, Sinfonia Concertante etc. Martin Jones, piano (Sinfonia Concertante), Malcolm Williamson, piano (Sonata), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Groves, conductor Though Malcolm Williamson lived in London for fifty years, many of the titles and first performance venues of his works confirm that he was at heart an Australian: as well as his pieces for Australian Bicentennial Year, 1988, his last two symphonies are both rooted in Australian culture. In 1965, he spoke about his nationality at the Conference on Music and Education in the Commonwealth held at the University of Liverpool, "... when I think about it I am certain that my music is characteristically Australian although I have never tried to make it so. We Australians have to offer the world a persona compounded of forcefulness, brashness, a direct warmth of approach, sincerity which is not ashamed, and more of what the Americans call 'get-up-and-go' than the Americans themselves possess." Indeed, the vigorous ebullience and emotional candour of his writing sets him apart from most other composers active in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century.
	SRCD.282 Gerald Finzi - Songs John Carol Case, baritone, Robert Tear, tenor, Neil Jenkins, tenor, Howard Ferguson, piano "I do hate the bilge and bunkum about composers trying to 'add' to a poem - that a fine poem is complete in itself, and to set it is only to gild the lily, and so on ... I rather expected it [over the setting of two Milton Sonnets] and expect it still more when the Intimations [of Immortality] is finished . . . Obviously a poem may be unsatisfactory in itself for setting, but that is a purely musical consideration - that it has no architectural possibilities - no broad vowels where climaxes should be, and so on. But the first and last thing is that a composer is (presumably) moved by a poem and wishes to identify himself with it and share it." Gerald Finzi
	SRCD.284 David Wynne - Piano Sonata No. 2, String Quartet No. 3, Ian Parrott - String Quartet No. 4, David Harries - Piano Quintet Op. 20 Eric Harrison, piano, Alfredo Wang, violin, James Barton, violin, Frederick Riddle, viola, George Isaac, cello David Wynne summed up his creative creed in the 1962 Cheltenham Festival programme brochure, stating that he favoured "the old fashioned view, that ideas and textures must move to their final achievement of Form through their own intrinsic musical values, and not drag through to a semblance of Form as a result of imposed devices, novel effects and extra-musical calculation".
	SRCD.285 Robert Still Symphonies 3 & 4, Searle Symphony 2 London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Eugene Goossens, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, Humphrey Searl, Symphony 2, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Josef Krips The Still Third Symphony has never sounded better than this. The Symphony, for all of its mercurial mood and tempo changes, comes across as much more convincing than ever before. The first movement rattles with energy, sounding at one moment like earlyish Rawsthorne, like RVW's London Symphony and at other times catching something of the Nordic symphonic Bax. The repose of the big Largo smiles indulgently. It's a beautifully structured and resolved piece of orchestral writing and not at all dissonant. The final Moderato is licked with flames though not as wild as those that convulse Alwyn's Fourth. Those last galloping side-drum punched bars suggest some acquaintance with the Shostakovich war-time symphonies. Much has been made of the psychological case-study that appears to have inspired the single movement Still Fourth Symphony. Still - in this strong succinct work - tersely draws the lines between himself and the twelve tone composers of the time. They were riding a cresting wave. His star was hitched to an increasingly unfashionable tonality. The music is riven with torment, excitingly painted in, but there is again too an almost Russian triumph at 18:00 onwards. The Third is a very fine work here superbly prepared and advocated by Goossens who at the time had only a handful of months to live. It must be amongst his last recordings. The Fredman/RPO Fourth is hardly less vital. By contrast the Searle work is dissonant but by no means extreme and certainly presenting no enduring obstacles to communication with his listeners. He was an unashamed serialist who had no truck with English pastoralism. His world was that of Schoenberg but with romantic proclivities as can be heard in his Aubade and elsewhere. The three movement Second Symphony tends towards doom and fantasy but also packs an epic punch as in the eloquent release of tension in the string theme at 5.03 (tr.6). The finale has some rushing impetuous massed string writing that parallels that in the much later Alwyn Symphony No. 5 Hydriotaphia. Tightly bouncing little woodwind figures more than glance towards Malcolm Arnold and his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The slamming brutality of the finale is superbly done. One can only admire Searle's ineluctable way with this piece. This fine CD enables us to get to grips again with Searle’s tough yet communicative Second and Still’s splendid Third and Fourth. They are heard in the best sound they have ever enjoyed. Rob Barnett MusicWeb-international.com
	SRCD.288 Elizabeth Maconchy - Symphony for Double String Orchestra, Serenata Concertante etc. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, Manoug Parikian, violin, London Symphony Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor Maconchy’s early successes were orchestral, and although she came to be best known for her chamber music, this CD reveals her continuing gift for orchestral writing. Where the quartets are very closely argued (in her words 'passionately intellectual and intellectually passionate'), the orchestral music is more expansive and more lyrical, revealing the full range of her expressive harmony. Her love of counterpoint, of rhythm as much as melody, is still present and gives the music its special character.
	SRCD.289 Walter Leigh - Concertino for Harpsichord, Music for String Orchestra, A Midsummer Night's Dream Suite etc. Trevor Pinnock, harpsichord, London Philharmonic Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Walter Leigh, born in 1905 and killed in action near Tobruk in 1942, was a craftsman-composer of a sort commoner in the 18th than in the 20th century. Almost all his music was written for immediate use. Like Haydn, he would not have dreamed of fulfilling a commission without ascertaining the probable capabilities of his performers. He could plug in to any number of different idioms according to the needs of the occasion. He seems to have been little concerned with self-expression, or the desire to write his own biography in music. His own character emerges by the way as we listen to the music, though his versatility and powers of adaptation were so great that it is not easy to guess who the real Walter Leigh was, or where, but for his tragically early death, his remarkable talents might have taken him.
	SRCD.291 Alan Rawsthorne - Symphony Nos. 1, 2 & 3 Tracy Chadwell, soprano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir John Pritchard, conductor, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, Norman Del Mar, conductor
	SRCD.292 Herbert Howells - Piano Quartet in A minor, Fantasy String Quartet, Rhapsodic Quintet Bernard Roberts, piano, Nona Lidell, violin, Marilyn Taylor, violin, Jean Stewart, viola, Bernard Richards, cello, Thea King, clarinet Herbert Howells was the last of the great English Romantics whose tongues were loosened by folksong. He was born in Gloucestershire in 1892 and what Marion M. Scott wrote of Ivor Gurney: "his education may be said to have begun with the beauty he saw about him, the lovely countryside, the hills, the Severn river" is equally true of Howells. For him, as for Holst, Finzi, Gurney, C. W. Orr, Julius Harrison, and Vaughan Williams himself, the West of England country scene became a vital shaping force - we may easily feel that the colour and temper of all his finest creations have been quietly determined by it ...
	SRCD.293 William Alwyn - Mirages, Fantasy-Waltzes etc. Benjamin Luxon, baritone, David Willison, piano, Christopher Hyde-Smith, flute, Marisa Robles, harp, Sheila Randell, piano
	SRCD.295 Havergal Brian - Symphonies Nos. 6 & 16, Arnold Cooke - Symphony No. 3 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, conductor (Brian), Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor (Cooke)
	SRCD.296 Arnold Bax - Symphony No. 6, Irish Landscape, Overtures New Philharmonia Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor Conflict lies at the heart of Arnold Bax’s seven symphonies. His rather self-indulgent youthful music had shown itself capable of tragedy in such things as November Woods (1917), the Piano Quintet (1915), and the Second Piano Sonata (1919). But the First Symphony (1921-2) reflected a psychic upheaval that must have shaken him to the foundations. He has denied that it was the First World War, and we must take his word for it that there was no conscious influence - but the Easter Rising was another matter ...
	SRCD.299 E J Moeran - Cello Concerto, Cello Sonata, Prelude for cello and piano Peers Coetmore, cello, Eric Parkin, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, leader Rodney Friend, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor "There are wonderful things we could do together in creating music, not only concertos and orchestral work, but chamber music," wrote Ernest John Moeran in a letter dated 21 October 1943 to his future wife Peers Coetmore. They had first met in 1930, while Moeran was visiting his friend, the painter Augustus John. Coetmore, a brilliant, former prize-winning student of the Royal Academy of Music, had established herself as a solo cellist of distinction. It was not until 1943, however, when she gave a concert in Leominster attended by Moeran that they met again and he became enchanted by her ...
	SRCD.301 Elgar - Falstaff, Enigma Variations, Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 New Philharmonia Orchestra, Andrew Davis, conductor Elgar composed Falstaff in 1913, though he made some sketches in 1902 (the year after Cockaigne, with which Falstaff has several affinities). In his detailed and indispens able analytical note, he emphasised that the listener should forget the buffoon of The Merry Wives of Windsor and concentrate on the Falstaff of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. He cites Maurice Morgann's description of Falstaff as "a conception hardly less complex, hardly less wonderful than that of Hamlet" made "wholly of incongruities... a knight, a gentleman and a soldier, without either dignity, decency or honour". Elgar was equally complex, and the work is another, perhaps the greatest, addition to his musical portrait-gallery in which there was always room for self-portraits. Falstaff's quixotic humour, his dreams of the innocence of youth beyond recall, his delight at being in the apple orchards of the Severn country, are Elgar’s too. This is Elgar's Falstaff rather than Shakespeare's.
	SRCD.302 Frank Bridge - String Quartets Nos. 3 & 4, Piano Trio No. 2 etc. Allegri Quartet, Hugh Maguire, violin, David Roth, violin, Patrick Ireland, viola, Bruno Schrecker, cello, Tunnell Trio, John Tunnell, violin, Charles Tunnell, cello, Susan Tunnell, piano, with Brian Hawkins, viola "Frank Bridge is known almost entirely by his early works such as the Piano Quartet Phantasy. To those who know only this period of his work, the later pieces must seem like those of another composer. The earlier works are tonal, and harmonically direct, the melodies clear and strong, the rhythm if not square, then rather regular. The later works have no clear keys, the melodies have a curious conversation-like character the rhythms are usually irregular, and definite rhythmic patters are rare. But to those familiar with all his works the connection between the two periods is clear — the seed of the later work is in the earlier — stemming from a desire to say more personal and subtler things. They can be difficult at first to follow, apart of course from the invariable fascination of the sound, the conversational melodies can be difficult to recognise, but the drama and tensions (are) easy to feel." Benjamin Britten, 1955
	SRCD.304 Hugh Wood – String Quartets 1 & 2 The Rider Victory, The Horses, Dartington String Quartet, April Cantelo & Paul Hamburger Hugh Wood's first two string quartets are compact. The second is in a single movement. The first is a vivid essay in Schoenbergian tension, scampering expansions and sinister urgency. The Second is even more extreme in its avant-garde embrace. Mordant attack and sudden pizzicato expostulations blaze their way through this work without strangling opportunities for eerie asides, shuddering revelation and moments of strained lyricism. There are three other Wood quartets (1978, 1993, 2001). April Cantelo cannot be excelled in these songs. The witty way she points the words 'and tilted hind hooves' is matched by the bursting rhetorical conflagration and blast of the Pennines in April. These three songs are from Ted Hughes’ early collections The Hawk in the Rain and Lupercal. These are not conventional settings - this is after all Hugh Wood - but it is difficult to imagine them set to other music. The ringing operatic confidence of Wood’s Muir songs could hardly be projected with more volatile assurance than they receive from Paul Hamburger and April Cantelo. For an exemplary listening experience try The Bird which: an explosion of admiration veering over the precipice into ecstasy. The second disc starts with two works by Rainier. Here we are recognisably in the same realm as Wood's Second Quartet - just a little further North. Intriguingly, though, Quanta does not deny the singing core of the oboe. One thinks in this work of Crosse's Ariadne and even of Malcolm Arnold's Oboe Concerto although the carapace is dissonant. Much the same can be said of the usually sterner format of the String Trio which ends with magical held-notes, arresting time. We then arrive at four cello and piano works. The Berkeley Duo represents a return to tonality even if a full engagement is constrained by Berkeley's natural reserve. The Fricker sonata in three movements and was written at Walton's home in Ischia. Walton is the dedicatee. It is a work of turbulent severity, exciting in the first and riptide third movements and otherwise statuesque in the manner of Hughes' Horses and lyrically expressive. Ten years after the Fricker comes Aberdonian, Martin Dalby's Variations. These are angular in the manner of Wood and Rainier. McCabe's Partita is stern and grave. It is again in the idiom of the times - the mid-1960s - yet with some lyrical 'give' as at 4:50. The recording of the cello and piano works is excellent and compares favourably with the Rainier in terms of background ‘burble’. The words of the sung poems are printed in the booklet. Overall a fascinating collection bound to stir memories or impressions from first time discovery but a satisfying listening experience even if you are encountering these iconic recordings for the first time. Rob Barnett MusicWeb-international.com
	SRCD.305 Justin Connolly - Triad III, Cinquepaces Op.5, Poems of Wallace Stevens I, Verse Op.7b Verse: John Alldis Choir, Triad III: Vesuvius Ensemble, Janet Craxton, oboe, Brian Hawkins, viola, Charles Tunnell, cello, Cinquepaces: Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, Philip Jones, trumpet, Elgar Howarth, trumpet, Ifor James, horn, John Iveson, trombone, John Fletcher, tuba, Poems of Wallace Stevens I: Jane Manning, soprano, The Nash Ensemble, Justin Connolly, conductor Distinguishing features of Justin Connolly’s compositions include a thrilling technical virtuosity at the service of expressive clarity, judicious juxtaposition of stasis and dynamism and a kaleidoscopic handling of short cell-like motifs within logically developed structures. This disc presents a representative selection of works from the 1960s, a time of both consolidation and experimentation for the composer, who had found his distinctive musical language and was exploring its range and flexibility through the medium of various instrumental and vocal ensembles.
	SRCD.306 Harrison Birtwistle - The Fields of Sorrow, Verses for Ensembles, Nenia: The Death of Orpheus Jane Manning, soprano, London Sinfonietta, David Atherton, conductor, The Matrix, Alan Hacker, director The three works presented on this disc date from a significant period of transition in the music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Appropriately, for a composer with such an instinctive sense of theatre, this transformation came about in relation to two contrasting operas. Verses for Ensembles, of 1969, was one of the last of an iconoclastic series of works, including the vocal-instrumental Ring a Dumb Carillon (1965) and Tragoedia, for ensemble (1965), all notable for their forceful and hardedged dynamism, related to the aggressive and violent one-act opera Punch and Judy (1967). In contrast, the other two works on this release, Nenia: The Death of Orpheus (1970) and The Fields of Sorrow (1972) are markedly mellow in mood, being satellite pieces of his next large-scale work for the theatre ...
	SRCD.307 Maw - Sinfonia, Gardner, Addison, Dodgson - Music for Brass English Chamber Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, Philip Jones & Elgar Howarth, trumpets, Ifor James, horn John Iveson, trombone John Fletcher, tuba Born on 5 November 1935 in Grantham, Nicholas Maw studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1955 to 1958 with Lennox Berkeley and Paul Steinitz, and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Max Deutsch. Despite the merits of such early works as Nocturne for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra (1958) or his Webernesque Six Chinese songs (1959), it was not until the première of his cantata for three women’s voices and orchestra, Scenes and Arias at the Proms in 1962 that Maw first came to prominence ...
	SRCD.311 John Tavener – Canciones Espanolas Kevin Smith, James Bowman, The King’s Singers, The Nash Ensemble conducted by John Tavener John Tavener can be heard here in two works from the turbulently active 1970s. The twelve *Canciones Españolas* are very short - the dozen being complete in less than 17 minutes. They set six Spanish folk songs concerned with love and death – rich pickings! These silvery flame-flickering slivers of sound are rife with vitality and with the redolence of Dufay and of the Trouvères. Some tracks might almost be pastiches but then we come to Dime a do tienes las mientes and to Pase el agua ma Julietta where a fractured shatter synthesises courtly dances. You hear this again in the stagger and grip of Interlude (VI) where held notes by the organ are hedged around with percussion impacts and a flitter of woodwind note-cells. Music of Iberia had already been used by Tavener in his Ultimos Ritos dating from shortly before the Canciones. Intending a more direct use of the material he scored the Canciones for two high voices, two flutes (doubling piccolo), alto flute, amplified harpsichord, chamber organ, hand bells, side drum and four small gongs. This makes for fascinating and very attractive listening, not at all the holy minimalism for which he has later become known. This sequence has something in common with Berio's then contemporary sets of folksongs. The *Requiem for Father Malachy* is a much more substantial work incorporating the most commonly encountered mass particles but adding a Hosanna. If Berio used the Swingles in his Sinfonia then Tavener was happy to use The King's Singers in this Requiem as well as a much-expanded Nash Ensemble. The Father Malachy Requiem is dedicated to the free-thinking Father Malachy Lynch (1899-1972) of the Carmelite Priory at Allington Castle in Kent. Tavener is more unforgivingly avant-garde in this work. Japanese temple music mixes with dark choral waves, organ flights and protesting brass. A touch of the medieval - and even of Orff - can be heard in Dies Irae but it is extruded through the withering avant-garde blitz of the 1970s. Seraphic voices of the middle ages can be heard in Offertorium. The soundly researched and detailed notes are by Paul Conway - a meritorious regular for Lyrita and the rising Lewis Foreman of his time. The vocal and instrumental contribution seems perfect – certainly clear and confident. Simon Gibson has wrought the usual wonders with analogue originals dating back three and a half decades. They sound stunning. It is good through this vital and emotionally inventive music to be reminded of Tavener’s roots and thriving originality. The music still draws you in. Rob Barnett MusicWeb-international.com
	SRCD.313 Gordon Crosse - Purgatory Peter Bodenham, tenor, Glenville Hargreaves, baritone, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Northern College of Music, Michael Lankester, conductor
	SRCD.314 Arthur Benjamin - Symphony, North American Square Dance Suite etc. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, conductor, London Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor
	SRCD.315 Gordon Jacob - Symphonies 1 & 2 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor The prejudice against German music after WWI resulted in an emphasis on the latest French and Russian music of the time, which moulded the language of Jacob’s generation. These influences can be heard in Jacob’s symphonies, from the regular melodic patterns of Poulenc to the rhythmic eccentricities of early Stravinsky, together with the sonorous tuttis of Elgar, still in Jacob’s youth the star in the English firmament.
	SRCD.316 British Horn Concertos David Pyatt, horn, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor
	SRCD.317 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - Violin Concerto, Romance, Legend & Julius Harrison - Bredon Hill Lorraine McAslan, violin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Time has dealt cruelly with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A century ago (November 1898), his setting of Longfellow's Hiawatha's Wedding Feast began its progress round the musical world, making its composer as famous a figure as Sullivan and, at the time, more so than Delius, Vaughan Williams or Holst. But after his death at the early age of thirty-seven, his music suffered a decline in popularity, relieved only by the dramatised performances of Hiawatha given each year in the 1920s and 1930s by the Royal Choral Society ...
	SRCD.318 Premières & Encores - Rawsthorne, Morgan, Pierson, Chagrin, Arnold, Warlock Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor, Vernon Handley, conductor, John Pritchard, conductor, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor In the Britain, Scandinavia and the Netherlands edition of the Twentieth Century Composers series, Humphrey Searle commented on Alan Rawsthorne: "I feel that his contribution to English music is as important as that of any composer working in England today, and that this will be realized more and more as time goes by."
	SRCD.320 William Busch - Cello Concerto, Piano Concerto Raphael Wallfisch, cello, Piers Lane, piano, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor "My first impression of William Busch the composer was of sinewy toughness, the piece I heard at Morley College in wartime was his NicholasVariations for piano (1942) named after his infant son - his likeness was not mirrored in the craggy, spare music.The next music I heard of Busch’s counterbalanced this first impression - songs that were gentle and tender although the music was still sinewy and avoiding rich harmony, settings with the voice and words predominant, with easy intervals for the listener to grasp the sense of the music ..." John Amis
	SRCD.321 Charles Villiers Stanford - Cello Concerto, Piano Concerto No. 3 Alexander Baillie, cello, Malcolm Binns, piano, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor Charles Villiers Stanford came from a well-heeled professional family in Dublin, the son of a leading Protestant lawyer. Indeed there were lawyers on both sides of the family. This was a cultured world, Stanford’s father played the cello and sang, and the leading Dublin intellectuals of the day were constant visitors, providing a brilliant background against which the precocious young Stanford developed. He attended Henry Tilney Bassett's School in Dublin, where classical studies were the focus of teaching, and he learned piano, organ and violin, and studied composition with leading local musicians and with Arthur O’Leary in London.
	SRCD.322 John Joubert - Symphony No. 1 London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor My First Symphony was commissioned in 1955 by the Hull Philharmonic Society and first performed in the City Hall, Hull, by the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra in the April of the following year. The conductor on that occasion was Vilem Tausky, but, since the orchestra consisted largely of local amateurs, the business of conducting the weekly rehearsals was the responsibility of the late Robert Marchant, then Head of Music at the University of Hull. Being at the time Lecturer in Music at the same university, I did in fact take some of the preliminary rehearsals myself, thus not only gaining invaluable experience, but also helping to ensure that the orchestra knew the work inside out when the time came to hand over the direction to the visiting maestro ...
	SRCD.323 Grace Williams - Carillons for Oboe & Orchestra, Sea Sketches for string orchestra etc. Anthony Camden, oboe, Howard Snell, trumpet, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Sir Charles Groves, conductor, David Atherton, conductor
	SRCD.324 William Mathias - Ave Rex, Elegy for a Prince, This Worlde’s Joie Sir Geraint Evans, bass-baritone, Janet Price, soprano, Kenneth Bowen, tenor, Michael Rippon, baritone, Welsh National Opera Chorus, The Bach Choir, St George’s Choristers, London Symphony Orchestra, New Philharmonia Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor, Sir David Willcocks, conductor
	SRCD.325 William Mathias - Clarinet Concerto, Harp Concerto, Piano Concerto No.3 Gervase de Peyer, clarinet, Osian Ellis, harp, Peter Katin, piano, New Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor
	SRCD.326 Daniel Jones - Symphony Nos. 6 & 9, The Country Beyond the Stars Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, Welsh National Opera Chorus, Sir Charles Groves, conductor, Bryden Thomson, conductor
	SRCD.327 Grace Williams - Ballads for Orchestra, Fairest of Stars, Symphony No.2 Janet Price, soprano, BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, Sir Charles Groves, conductor
	SRCD.328 William Mathias - Invocation and Dance, Laudi, Vistas etc. London Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, 1975 National Youth Orchestra of Wales, New Philharmonia Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor, Arthur Davison, conductor
	SRCD.329 Daniel Jones - Symphonies Nos. 4, 7 & 8 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Charles Groves, conductor, BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, Bryden Thomson, conductor Daniel Jones was one ofWales’s leading composers in the post-1945 era and one of the most distinguished symphonists of his generation. He was born in Pembroke and brought up in Swansea, a city which became something of a magnet for Jones throughout his life, and it was in his home town’s university that he took a first in English before later being awarded an MA for his work on the Elizabethan Lyric (and later still an honorary D Litt). It was also here that he met, and struck up lasting friendships with, Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins, Alfred Janes and other "free spirits" who shared Jones’s zest for life.
	SRCD.330 Alun Hoddinott - Clarinet Concerto, Harp Concerto, Piano Concerto Nos. 1 & 2 Gervase de Peyer, clarinet, Osian Ellis, harp, London Symphony Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor, Philip Fowke, piano, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Barry Wordsworth, conductor, Martin Jones, piano, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, conductor Alun Hoddinott was born in Bargoed, Glamorganshire, South Wales. He showed musical aptitude young, beginning violin lessons at the age of four, later becoming a founder-member (playing the viola) of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He won a composition scholarship to the University College of South Wales at sixteen. Hoddinott began composing as a boy, but withdrew most of his early works, including some that had already been performed and broadcast. His sequence of symphonies has been seen as the centre of his achievement, but his concertos are hardly less important. By the time of his Third Symphony, completed when he was forty, he had written thirteen concertante works, for a wide range of solo instruments and scorings. The early concertos for oboe and for clarinet are with strings only, the First Piano Concerto uses wind and percussion without strings, the Organ Concerto a large orchestra particularly rich in percussion ...
	SRCD.331 Alun Hoddinott - Symphony Nos. 2, 3 & 5 London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, David Atherton, conductor, Andrew Davis, conductor
	SRCD.332 Alun Hoddinott - Dives & Lazarus, Sinfonia Fidei etc. Felicity Palmer, soprano, Thomas Allen, baritone, Csaba Erdélyi, viola, Moray Welsh, cello, Jill Gomez, soprano, Stuart Burrows, tenor, Welsh National Opera Chorus, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra, David Atherton, conductor, Sir Charles Groves, conductor
	SRCD.333 Alun Hoddinott - The Sun, The Great Luminary of the Universe London Symphony Orchestra - New Philharmonia Orchestra - Norman Del Mar - David Atherton
	SRCD.335 Hoddinott, Searle, Banks, Maw - Works for Horn and Orchestra Barry Tuckwell, horn, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, conductor, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor, Alan Civil & Ian Harper, horns, English Chamber Orchestra, Norman Del Mar, conductor Hoddinott’s idiomatic use of the horn in his Aubade and Scherzo for horn and strings (1965) and Third Symphony (1968) suggests a natural affinity with the instrument, confirmed by his Horn Concerto, Op.65 (1969). Commissioned by the Llandaff Festival and first performed by Ifor James with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edouard van Remoortel on 3 June 1969, it exploits the lyrical and expressive facets of the solo instrument’s character ...
	SRCD.336 Lyrita Classics - Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Grainger, Holst, Warlock, Harty, Berners, Balfe Philharmonia Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Andrew Davis, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myer Fredman, conductor, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Vernon Handley, conductor, London Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, ‡ English Chamber Orchestra, Imogen Holst, conductor, ‡‡ London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, conductor
	SRCD.340 John Joubert - William Mathias, First Symphonies London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Groves
	SRCD.2217 Michael Tippett - The Midsummer Marriage Alberto Remedios, tenor, Joan Carlyle, soprano, Raimund Herincx, baritone, Elizabeth Harwood, soprano, Stuart Burrows, tenor, Helen Watts, contralto, Stafford Dean, bass, Elizabeth Bainbridge, mezzo, Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sir Colin Davis, conductor
	SRCD.2218 William Alwyn - Miss Julie Jill Gomez, soprano, Benjamin Luxon, baritone, Della Jones, mezzo-soprano, John Mitchinson, tenor, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vilem Tausky, conductor
	SRCD.2258 George Lloyd - Symphony Nos. 4, 5 & 8 Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Edward Downes, conductor George Lloyd's promising start to a career in music was literally blasted to a halt by the War. Lloyd was a marine on the Arctic convoys in the North Atlantic, serving on HMS Trinidad for which he wrote the ship’s march. This was the ill-fated ship which, in 1942, accidentally torpedoed itself when a steering device jammed. He was in the engine-room after the explosion but got out and was rescued. However, he was so badly shell-shocked it was feared he would not survive, and he was discharged as a hopeless case. He was only slowly nursed back to health over many years by his devoted wife, Nancy. By the end of the War he was able to travel, and Nancy, who was Swiss, took him to Switzerland where he wrote the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, both sublimating wartime experiences in wide-spanning colourful music of immediate melodic and emotional appeal.
	SRCD.2261 John Ireland - The Songs Benjamin Luxon, baritone, Alfreda Hodgson, contralto, John Mitchinson, tenor, Alan Rowlands, piano Although John Ireland wrote concerted chamber music, orchestral works and choral pieces he devoted much of his long creative career to piano music and songs, and it is in these works that the essential Ireland ismost comprehensively to be found - they give the fullest picture of his multifarious musical personality and creative range. The piano, after all, was his instrument and the medium of his most self-revealing thought - we hear this also in his songs since poetry for him, who had a nice and searching taste in literature, must necessarily be interpreted by both participants in a song ...
	SRCD.2271 John Ireland - Chamber Music - Sextet, Trios, Sonatas Yfrah Neaman, violin, Julian Lloyd Webber, cello, Eric Parkin, piano, Melos Ensemble, André Navarra, cello, Gervase de Peyer, clarinet In a letter to Sir Henry Wood, John Ireland once described himself as "England's most laborious composer." More likely than not this was a typical Ireland exaggeration, and yet there is no denying the fact that, compared to some of his contemporaries, his output is relatively small. If we include the two early string quartets which were published posthumously, the youthful sextet (which he did not release until 1960) and the four duo sonatas, then there are just ten chamber works in his catalogue. Always conscious of what he called the irrevocability of publication, he was known to have destroyed much early work. What survived would sometimes be refashioned, as in the case of the Third Trio. This began life in 1913 as a trio for violin, clarinet and piano; two years later it emerged for piano and strings, and then as late as 1938 was entirely rewritten as we have it now.
	SRCD.2277 John Ireland - The Piano Music Eric Parkin, piano "How can the critics begin to understand my music if they have never read Machen?" This was a question heard to fall on more than one occasion from John Ireland’s lips. Ireland came of a literary family, and literature and literary people played a natural part in the formation of his personality. Most influential of all were the works of Arthur Machen the Welsh writer, who was to Ireland almost what Yeats was to Bax. Ireland had dreamt in fire - after his first encounter with Machen it was only a matter of time before he worked in fire also. In the wake of The House of Souls and The Hill of Dreams a smouldering coal flared gloriously into flame. For Machen loved all memoried things and places, things with a past behind them - and the more remote the past the greater he felt able to partake of them. He hailed from a forgotten country in the West, a land of dark and ancient woods and streams and deep sunken lanes, the ancient Welsh kingdom of Gwent ...
	SRCD.2286 William Hurlstone - Piano Concerto, Swedish Air Variations, Piano Trio, Piano Quartet Eric Parkin, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicholas Braithwaite, conductor, Tunnell Piano Quartet William Yeates Hurlstone was born in West Kensington on January 7th 1876. His musical talent was early manifested to sympathetic parents, and at eighteen William won a maintenance scholarship for three years to the Royal College of Music. His promise there was sufficient for it to be extended to four years. He studied piano with Algernon Ashton — himself one of the most shamefully ignored of English composers, with a long list of what, for me, are unqualified masterpieces to his credit — and composition with Stanford, who spoke of him as his best student; Stanford’s other students at the time included John Ireland, Frank Bridge, Coleridge-Taylor and Thomas Dunhill, with all of whom, especially Coleridge-Taylor, Hurlstone was always on very friendly terms ...
	SRCD.2337 50th Anniversary Set 1 William Alwyn to John Ireland
	SRCD.2338 50th Anniversary Set 2 Gordon Jacob to William Wordsworth
	SRCD.2339 50th Anniversary Set 1+2 Gordon Jacob to William Wordsworth
	SRCD.334 Welsh Dances Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias, Daniel Jones “Each and every one of these works is worthy of their composer … The concerto Grosso No.1 is a great piece. It manages to maintain a fine balance between exhilaration and sheer beauty. It is good to have it back in the catalogue once again. Even the most cursory hearing of [Mathias’s] Celtic Dances reveals a work that sparkles, shimmers and quite simply entertains …every enthusiast of British music will insist that this CD is in their collection.”