Two Concertos For Organ

New Seasons is a project undertaken by oboist Albrecht Mayer to create "new" concertos for oboe, based primarily on the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel. He and arranger Andreas N. Tarkmann used arias, sometimes including bits of recitative, and gave the vocal lines to the oboe, flute, and bassoon without changing too much of the accompanimental parts to create a cycle of four concertos. Compared to Handel's original instrumental music, these are naturally more lyrical and sometimes more declamatory, but it is surprising how often the music is very dance-like. Lively, moving rhythms are not what is normally expected in vocal music, but it makes the arias used here very natural sounding as concerto movements.

After a highly acclaimed recording of Briten’s Cello Symphony (ONYX4058) Pieter Wispelwey and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiko Kim, turn to two romantic cello concertos whose neglect is hard to fathom. Lalo, unusually for a French composer in the mid 19th century, was drawn to chamber music, and formed a string quartet (in which he played viola, and later second violin) that championed the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His passion for chamber music developed to embrace large scale orchestral works – two violin concertos, the famous 'Symphonie espagnole' for violin and orchestra, a symphony in G minor, the Piano Concerto and the concerto recorded here: the Cello concerto in D minor of 1877.

This disc brings together recordings made in the 1980's as part of a reduction of three original discs down to two. At the same time, the original fine recordings have been remastered to good effect with added depth and space. This makes a particularly important improvement to the Coronation Anthems which previously came over as sonically lacking ideal breadth, depth and recorded weight in Zadok. The ears adjusted after that.

Charles-Marie Widor was born in Lyon to a family of organ builders and consequently became an organist of great skill and an assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at La Madeleine in Paris at the age of twenty-four.

This recording brings together all the arrangements for harpsichord by Bach of instrumental concertos by his Italian contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, adding those of one concerto each by the brothers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. They are performed by Sophie Yates who has made a series of solo CDs for Chandos, many of which have won international awards. She has been described by Gramophone as ‘hugely talented’ and by BBC Music as playing ‘with exceptional poise’.

This recording brings together all the arrangements for harpsichord by Bach of instrumental concertos by his Italian contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, adding those of one concerto each by the brothers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. They are performed by Sophie Yates who has made a series of solo CDs for Chandos, many of which have won international awards. She has been described by Gramophone as ‘hugely talented’ and by BBC Music as playing ‘with exceptional poise’.

Who was Erik Chisholm? A fascinating musical polymath: composer, conductor and performer, and collector of folk music from his native Scotland. Born in Glasgow in 1904, his attitude to music was progressive, looking towards central European modernism (he was dubbed ‘MacBartók’). Chisholm’s understanding and mastery of the piano—he performed the Scottish premieres of Rachmaninov’s Third and Bartók’s First Concertos—is evident in his two concertos.