Orchestral Suite

Leonard Bernstein Génie protéiforme, animateur de la vie musicale américaine pendant presque quarante ans, débordant de générosité et parfois d’outrance, Leonard Bernstein aurait eu 100 ans le 25 août 2018. Né à Lawrence, à une cinquantaine de kilomètres au nord de Boston (Massachusetts), il est le fils d’exilés ukrainiens, dont le père a fait fortune dans le négoce en fournitures pour coiffeurs. Après son diplôme à la Boston Latin School de Boston, il étudie la musique à Harvard où il rencontre Aaron Copland avec lequel il restera ami tout au long de sa vie. C’est là qu’il écrit ses premières œuvres pour les besoins des spectacles de l’université et qu’il rencontre le chef grec Dimitri Mitropoulos dont le charisme et l’ascendant sur les musiciens l’incitent à devenir chef d’orchestre.

"The Forgotten Recordings" features eight historic performances made for the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1954 and 1955 – seven of which are first releases – that have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides extensive and informative booklet notes.

Though there are thousands of languages and countless political differences across the world, people tend to come together through equally endless forms of music and dance.

This recording brings together four extraordinary mid-20th-century composers who helped shape America’s musical destiny. Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land is a moving tribute to the American rancher and farmer. It forms a profound celebration of those unsung heroes of that country’s landscape, and is perhaps his greatest expression of the preciousness of life. Walter Piston is represented by his colorful and beguiling The Incredible Flutist, which depicts a traveling circus led by a magical musician who is able to heal the sorrows of those who hear his music.

Following a devastating cancer diagnosis in September 2022, Adrian Sutton, composer of the music for War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and other National Theatre productions, made a conscious decision to change his focus, committing himself to working solely on music for the concert hall. This has led to a series of major new works, including his Violin Concerto which received its world première at the Southbank Centre in June 2023, played by Fenella Humphreys and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Adrian commented: ‘We all have limited time – and resources. How to make best use of them? In my situation, there’s only one answer: avoid egregious waste of both time and energy ruminating on things I can’t change. Instead, I can choose how I react to the facts – and I’m choosing not to be a victim.’ This new album of world-première record ings reflects the composer’s new focus. Of the album, Adrian Sutton says: ‘Here's the real musical me. My core musical DNA. The Violin Concerto in particular (being a violinist myself) is for me the main course on this disc, but the other works are a showcase for what I’ve always been about… ranging from the bracing and instrumentally challenging A Fist Full of Fives through to orchestral suites derived from my theatre works. I’m very proud of them all, and pleased to have had the opportunity to share them.’

Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Sakari Oramo has a special affinity with the music of his compatriot the Finnish composer Sibelius, which this recording admirably demonstrates. Sibelius’s ever-popular Lemminkäinen-Suite is complemented here with the early Spring Song and the lesser-known Suite from Belshazzar’s Feast. Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen-Suite (also called the Four Legends, or Four Legends from the Kalevala), Op. 22 in the 1890s.

The Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) is best remembered for a handful of virtuoso piano pieces, but he also produced a substantial body of orchestral music, most of it unperformed for a century or more. This third volume presents his very first orchestral work, a strikingly assured Overture in D major, written when he was seventeen, and his last, a sombre, dignified and deeply felt Prelude and Fugue for strings, composed on the death of his mother in 1910.

Conductor Dalia Stasevka who received the BBC Music Magazine's 'Personality of the Year' Award in 2023 and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra present three works by the Finnish composer Helvi Leiviska, who was Finland's first major female composer.

To mark the 60th birthday of British composer Jonathan Dove, Orchid Classics presents an album devoted to his extraordinary orchestral music, performed by the BBC Philharmonic. Under the direction of Timothy Redmond, the BBC Philharmonic performs works which span nearly two decades, from The Ringing Isle of 1997, to Gaia Theory, premiered at the BBC Proms in 2014. The Ringing Isle was inspired by Handel’s observation about the bells he heard upon arriving in England; Dove uses bell-ringing patterns and allusions to Gaunt’s famous ‘scepter'd isle’ speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II.