Albert Sammons, Peers Coetmore, Bbc Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult Moeran: Symphony

What could be more experimental on the ultra-pluralistic contemporary scene than a composer unconcerned with individuality? For much of the time, David Bedford’s Recorder Concerto offers the kind of discreetly accompanied scales and arpeggios that have been standard issue from Vivaldi to Malcolm Arnold…

The programme Stravinsky selected for his Royal Festival Hall concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in December 1958 was unusually challenging both for the players and the audience. It offered in essence a retrospective of his life’s work, opening with his most recent score Agon, which must have surprised many people with its idiosyncratic use of serial techniques, and then worked backwards in time to conclude with the much safer Firebird Suite.

Jean Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7
London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Colin Davis
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 222 MB | Full Artwork: 164 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: LSO Live # LSO0051 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

As it turns out, Colin Davis hums. He also moans, groans, and sometimes even grunts. In this enormous but intimate super audio CD, the listener can hear Davis' vocal obbligato as he uses any means necessary to convey his vision to the musicians. (…) Even though Davis does hum, anyone who loves Sibelius will have to hear these performances.

Andrew Haveron and John Wilson deliver a fresh and intensely idiomatic reading of Korngolds Violin Concerto, coupled with the formidable String Sextet. One of the most sought-after violinists of his generation and a laureate of some of the most prestigious international violin competitions, Andrew Haveron studied in London at the Purcell School and the Royal College of Music. As a soloist, he has collaborated with conductors such as Jií Blohlávek, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, David Robertson, Stanisaw Skrowaczewski, and John Wilson, performing a broad range of well-known and less familiar concertos with many of the finest orchestras in the UK. In 1999 he was appointed first violinist of the internationally acclaimed Brodsky Quartet.

Since the beginning of his recording career, Colin Davis has been a champion of the music of Jean Sibelius, and his highly regarded cycle of the seven symphonies has been a mainstay of many LP and CD collections over the years. Recorded between 1975 and 1979 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and grouped here with the Violin Concerto and various famous tone poems, such as Finlandia, The Swan of Tuonela, and Tapiola, Davis' set is still a viable contender against other packages on the market, and listeners who want lucid interpretations will be hard pressed to find any that improve on these performances.

At a time when Schoenberg and Stravinsky were thought of as opposite poles, Roberto Gerhard was combining the density of the one with the dynamism of the other in a wholly personal synthesis. You can hear this in the Piano Concerto's mood swings from the dark and brooding to, in the finale, a Spanish take-off that Chabrier would have thought off the wall. Gerhard's 1960s music is in-your-face modernism that holds you in its grasp, embracing sound with an enthusiasm that remains inspirational today. Listen to the tape part of the Third Symphony–a cut-and-paste job that trounces most of the computer-music generation in its imagination and feeling for what's possible. Epithalamion features material originally intended for, of all things, Lindsay Anderson's film This Sporting Life. Not that its impact is any less than coherent; the percussion writing alone has a fantasy that will keep you entranced. Well prepared performances, superbly recorded. This is still music of the future.

Bringing his acclaimed Mendelssohn cycle to a rousing conclusion, Sir John Eliot Gardiner presents the composer s symphony-cantata, 'Lobgesang', in his first ever performance of the work. Three world-class soloists join the LSO and his own Monteverdi Choir for this recording for LSO Live. Mendelssohn wrote that the piece 'lies very near my heart', and with its stately grandeur and religiosity, plus its sheer magnitude, twice the length of any of his other symphonies, it stands amongst his most impressive works.

This program from the BBC Symphony Orchestra features compelling performances of two very different symphonies. The complex, visionary pantheism of Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral' is an ideal foil for the unbridled ferocity of his Symphony No.4. The album includes an special bonus - Martyn Brabbins's idiomatic realization of Saraband 'Helen' - heard here in it's first recording.

Krystian Zimerman, Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra present Ludwig van Beethoven's 5 piano concertos. The exceptional Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, together with Leonard Bernstein, presented an outstanding reference recording of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos 3, 4 and 5 more than 30 years ago (1989). At the time, both agreed on their commitment to music - in mind, heart and soul - which led to an extraordinary recording. Unfortunately, Bernstein died before the cycle was completed.