Overtures from the British Isles, Volume 1
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AUSTIN / BANTOCK / COLERIDGE-TAYLOR / SULLIVAN / etc
Overtures from the British Isles, Volume 1
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
[ Chandos / CD ]
Release Date: Monday 10 February 2014
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Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales present a collection of rarely heard overtures from the British Isles. Among these is Sir Frederic Cowen's Overture to The Butterfly's Ball (1901), illustrating a popular children's poem byWilliam Roscoe. All is vividly evoked by Cowen's pleasing melodic lines and delicate instrumental colour. It is easy to see why, in its day, the piece was a firm favourite, being played 26 times at the Proms between 1900 and 1940. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor achieved immediate success early in his career with his four-part cantata Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha. The Overture, composed in 1899, was intended as a prelude to the complete cycle but is now rarely heard in this context. Indeed, very little of the material in this Overture comes from the other Hiawatha pieces, the principal theme being the spiritual 'Nobody knows the trouble I see, Lord'. Perhaps better known as a leading baritone of his generation, Frederic Austin was also a composer of some achievement. In his tuneful and exciting concert overture The Sea Venturers, from 1936, he wanted to evoke 'something of the lives and character of English seamen who… took peril and pleasure as it came'.
"Half-forgotten overtures show the vigour of Britain's musical revivial throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras." (BBC Music)
"as Rumon Gamba's nicely slick performances with BBCNOW show, these are all nicely proportioned pieces; if never especially memorable, they don't deserve the total neglect they've suffered for the last three-quarters of a century." (The Guardian)
"This lively sequence shakes the archive dust from eight overtures by British composers, mainly knights, who lived from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries...Austin's The Sea Venturers [has] a genuine maritime evocativeness: blustery on the outside, wistful in the middle." (Sunday Times)
"The programme once assembled, it has been performed with zest and great accomplishment by Gamba and the BBC NOW. Chandos has recorded the performances in splendid, full-blooded and detailed sound and then issued them with thorough documentation, including informative notes by Lewis Foreman and a nice little essay by the conductor. This disc is a delight from start to finish, both in terms of the music and the performances." (Recording of the Month MusicWeb March 2014)
Tracks:
Austin, F:
Overture - The Sea Venturers
Bantock:
The Frogs, Op. 102
Coleridge-Taylor:
The Song of Hiawatha
Cowen:
The Butterfly's Ball Overture
Gardiner, H B:
Overture to a Comedy
Mackenzie:
The Little Minister: Overture
Stanford:
Oedipus Rex Prelude Op. 29
Sullivan, A:
Macbeth Overture
