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Komponist: BIRTWISTLE, Harrison ((b. 1934)) |
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ID: BC3007
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Brass CollectionSubkolektion: Brass
London Mozart Players, Brass Ensemble, Paul Archibald (director)
Hodie Gloriosa (Glorious Today) celebrates the old and the new. The repertoire brings together original music by the classical masters with classically inspired pieces by some of Britain’s most distinguished contemporary composers. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CC0052
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: InstrumentalSubkolektion: Music for Clarinet
Clarinet Classics is delighted to present a CD profile of one of the outstanding British clarinettists of the 20th century. A founder member of the Pierrot Players and the Fires of London, Alan Hacker’s playing astonished and delighted a generation of concert-goers and acted as an inspiration for many young players. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CC2020
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Subkolektion: Voices
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s compositional life from the mid 1970s to the 1980s was dominated by his opera The Mask of Orpheus, and the same period saw the origin of the Elegies, written for Melinda Maxwell and Helen Tunstall while they were working with the composer at the National Theatre.
‘They are like enchanted preludes…Enchantingly performed here’ The Sunday Times
The 24-page full colour CD booklet has a 6,000 word programme note in English including details of the Orpheus myth and Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, an interview with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, and a detailed track-by-track
guide, including translations. There are biographies of all the players and many photographs.
Introduction by Melinda Maxwell:
The myth of Orpheus and his music has occupied Sir Harrison Birtwistle (universally known as Harry) for most of his life, and the 26 Orpheus Elegies for oboe, harp and counter-tenor are a further comment in miniature on that myth. They are a re-telling of the story, and the mystery and power that surrounds an imagined music of Orpheus; music that represents a combination of the ethereal - Apollo - and the earthly - Dionysius; music that seduced creation itself with its power of expression.
The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, known to Harry for a long time, gradually became part of the composition process, and as the music was being written certain words and phrases from those sonnets seemed to clarify and strengthen the meaning of the music.
In time, Harry found that for some of the Elegies, a phrase was not enough. In Elegies 11, 13 and 14 the sonnets are set for voice in their entirety. The voice part is for counter -tenor and written for Andrew Watts. In Elegies 17, 20 and 26 portions of a sonnet are sung. For the remaining twenty Elegies, a phrase taken from a sonnet is written at the end of the instrumental music. For example, Elegy 12 (CD track 16) is fast, manic, rhythmic and repetitive, and the written words are the penultimate line of Sonnet number 5 from Rilke's first set: "the lyre's bars do not constrain his hands". As an aside these words add further meaning to the music, and the music evokes the atmosphere of the words.
Early on in the compositional process, Harry asked me about unusual sounds on the oboe, sounds encompassing harmonics and multiphonics (combinations of sounds that speak together forming chords that have unusual pitch formations and are mostly non-diatonic). I played some to him and wrote down those he liked. He particularly liked pitches that transformed and hung into multiphonics In Elegy 7 these sounds are used almost exclusively, to produce a music that is eerie and other-worldly, finishing with Rilke's words "[He emerged like] ore from the stone's silence". In the very first Elegy based around the note E, Birtwistle uses a double harmonic of an open fifth on E to splice, enrich and delve inside the sound, reaching further depths of expression. Rilke's words for this stark opening are "A tree has risen. Oh pure transcendence!".
Three of the Elegies use metronomes, and these give out a mechanical, inevitable, sense to the music. Elegy 25 uses two metronome pulses at slightly different speeds; Rilke's words are "Does time, the wrecker, really exist?".
The idea for the piece began in the late 1970s when Harry and I and the harpist Helen Tunstall were working at the National Theatre in London, and he expressed the wish to write a piece for oboe and harp. The first draft was written for the 2003 Cheltenham Festival, although not all the Elegies were completed and it was still a work in progress. Certain revisions and further additions ensued, and a longer version appeared in the 2004 Cheltenham Festival. Betty Freeman paid for the commission and Heinz and Ursula Holliger gave the world premičre with Andrew Watts at the Lucerne Festival in September 2004. The London premičre was given by myself, Helen and Andrew in October 2004 at the South Bank.
Throughout many rehearsals and subsequent performances in the UK and at the Holland (2006) and Bregenz (2007) Festivals, Harry offered further insights into our interpretations of phrase, nuance, pace and dynamics, and this recording is the culmination of this entire process. It is a piece full of contrasting voices, from music that is by turns warm, tender, almost wistful, and also bold, relentless, sometimes violent. Each Elegy speaks with its own voice, and such is the power of the composer's invention one feels that many more could follow. |
| 21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: MSVCD92013
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: InstrumentalSubkolektion: Piano and Clarinet
The works on this CD span almost 30 years, from 1965 to 1994. The most striking factor is the varying yet equally successful approach adopted in writing for the clarinet by these very different composers, all of whom cater for the unique character of the instrument.
tracks: Elizabeth Maconchy: Fantasia Anthony Powers: Sea/Air Piers Hellawell: High Citadels Harrison Birtwistle: Verses Richard Rodney Bennett: Scena III Hugh Wood: Paraphrase on "Bird of Paradise" Gordon Crosse: A Year and a Day Martin Butler: Capistrano Song Michael Berkeley: Flighting |
| 12.00 eur Buy |
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ID: NMCD003
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Chamber Music14 short songs by leading British composers - ranging from Harrison Birtwistle to Michael Nyman - drawn from Mary Wiegold's Songbook, an ever-increasing collection of works written for Wiegold and the Composers Ensemble
"Like a modern-day codex. Should nothing survive from the previous decade of British music save this, scholars would still be able to form a reliable picture of the diverse compositional activity of those years." |
| 22.00 eur Buy |
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ID: NMCD009
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Voices and Orchestra
Antony Pay, London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen - Harrison Birtwistle: Ritual Fragment
This disc couples two major works composed in the 1970s, Melencolia I and Meridian, a setting of love poetry, with Ritual Fragment, written in 1989. The works display Birtwistle's distinctive and forceful voice and range in mood from austere introspective journeying to moments of unbearable intensity. |
| 22.00 eur Buy |
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ID: NMCD031
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Orchestral WorksSubkolektion: Orchester
Three recordings from 1941, publicly available for the first time following transfer from the original 78rpm discs and lengthy subsequent treatment: the centrepiece is an off-air recording of the American premiere of Les Illuminations with Peter Pears.
1. BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Oliver Knussen, conductor/ Stefan Asbury, assistant conductor
2. London Sinfonietta/ Oliver Knussen, conductor
3. William Howard, piano - Anthony Powers
4. Composers Ensemble/ Diego Masson, conductor
5. Alexander Baillie, cello/ Andrew Ball, piano
6. Mary Wiegold, soprano/ Composers Ensemble/ Dominic Muldowney, cond
7. Mstislav Rostropovich, cello/ London Symphony Orchestra/ Hugh Wolff, conductor
8. BBC Singers/ John Poole, conductor
9. Jane's Minstrels/ Roger Montgomery, conductor
10. Nua Nos/ Noriko Kawai, piano/ Dairine Ni Mheadhra, conductor
11. Jane Manning, soprano/ Jane's Minstrels/ Roger Montgomery, conductor
12. London Sinfonietta | Peter Serkin, cello | Oliver Knussen, conductor
13. Sounds Positive/ David Sutton-Anderson, conductor
14. Martin Robertson, saxophone/ Christopher van Kampen, cello/ The Nash Ensemble/ Oliver Knussen, conductor
15. BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Andrew Davis, conductor
16. Peter Pears, tenor/ CBS Symphony Orchestra/ Benjamin Britten, conductor |
| 22.00 eur Buy |
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ID: NMCD042S
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: InstrumentalSubkolektion: Oboe
The renowned oboist is heard in this sequence: from the dignified simplicity of her own Elegy, to the rhythmic economy of Birtwistle's Pulse Sampler and the eerie keening of Holt's Banshee. |
| 22.00 eur Buy |
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