In Memory of an Angel

Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.

A number of diverse influences have helped shape the musical language of Malcolm Dedman (born in London in 1948 but resident in provincial South Africa since 2007), among them Bartók and Messiaen, his Bahá’í Faith and, more recently, his new South African homeland. Points of contact with other composers can be heard, too, not least Debussy, Ravel, Barber and Ginastera. These piano works embody a wide range of moods, from gentle introspection to energetic, dissonant vigour.

There's no question that everybody should have a copy of Berg's Violin Concerto. The most beautiful violin, the most moving, the most profound, and the most transcendent violin concerto of the twentieth century, Berg's violin concerto To the Memory of an Angel belongs in every civilized home. But which recording should be the one?
The argument could be made that this 2003 recording by violinist Daniel Hope with Paul Watkins conducting the BBC Symphony should be the one.