Smith: The Prison (Choral Symphony)

 
Smith: The Prison (Choral Symphony) cover
$35.00 Low Stock add to cart

DAME ETHEL SMYTH
Smith: The Prison (Choral Symphony)
Sarah Brailey, Dashon Burton / Experiential Orchestra and Chorus, James Blachly

[ Chandos SACD / Hybrid SACD ]

Release Date: Friday 13 November 2020

Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 4 - 7 business days.

August 18th marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting women in the US the right to vote. A fitting time then for our release of the World Premier Recording of Ethel Smyth's late masterpiece The Prison.

Smyth left home at nineteen to study composition in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorák, and Grieg. Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met, in 1903. (The second was Kaija Saariaho, whose L'Amour de loin appeared there in 2016!) Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she famously went to prison herself for throwing a stone through an MP's window.

Composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931 in Edinburgh's Usher Hall, The Prison is a Symphony in two parts, 'Close on Freedom' and 'The Deliverance', set for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The text is taken from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster and concerns the writings of a prisoner in solitary confinement, his reflections on life and his preparations for death.

"Smyth was much influenced by neo-Platonism and appended a line from Plotinus to The Prison, suggesting that music was a means to releasing the divine in us, Soloists and chorus convey that very well, sustaining a tension between physicality and spirit that gives the recording an almost Mahlerian quality." Choir & Organ

"The Prison as a whole perhaps suffers from a sameness of pace. Still, James Blachly, conducting New York's Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, catches the music's sweeping, sonorous energy. Sarah Brailey's soprano radiates assurance, and Dashon Burton is outstanding as the pensive Prisoner." The Guardian

Grammy Awards
63rd Awards (2021)
Winner - Best Classical Solo Vocal Album

Tracks:

Part I. Close on Freedom: 31:07
Part II. The Deliverance: 32:49