As a violinist, Lloyd was drawn to stringed instruments rather than the keyboard. His wife, Nancy had a very different attitude to the piano, however. Having been brought up listening to records of Alfred Cortot, among other great pianists, she had developed a genuine passion for the instrument. She was always urging her husband to write a piano concerto, but it was not until the early 1960s that those years of persuasion paid off and Lloyd wrote Scapegoat, the first of his series of four piano concertos. Now the composer had overcome his previous aversion to the keyboard, as he put it, ‘Suddenly, everything I thought of, I thought in terms of the piano’. From this dramatic change of heart emerged several works for solo piano. © Paul Conway
Lyrita Recorded Edition releases its George Lloyd Piano Works double album on 2 August 2024, performed by duo Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow and as soloists, Kathryn Stott and Martin Roscoe (SRCD 2423). ‘I just write what I have to write’. The artistic credo of George Lloyd conveys the directness and emotional honesty of his music. He wrote in a traditional idiom enriched by a close study of selected models, Verdi and Berlioz chief among them. His music is distinctive and written with integrity. There is a remarkable consistency to his output, most of which was created spontaneously and without the incentive of a commission. He was fortunate enough to discover his individual and versatile musical voice at an early age. The deceptively artless quality of his scores stems from a thorough grounding in composition techniques. As a violinist, Lloyd was drawn to stringed instruments rather than the keyboard. His wife, Nancy had a very different attitude to the piano, however. Having been brought up listening to records of Alfred Cortot, among other great pianists, she had developed a genuine passion for the instrument. She was always urging her husband to write a piano concerto, but it was not until the early 1960s that those years of persuasion paid off and Lloyd wrote Scapegoat, the first of his series of four piano concertos. Now the composer had overcome his previous aversion to the keyboard, as he put it, ‘Suddenly, everything I thought of, I thought in terms of the piano’. From this dramatic change of heart emerged several works for solo piano. © Paul Conway Electronic press kit and listening links available for reviewers from Ulysses Arts.
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LYRITA RELEASES GEORGE LLOYD'S COMPLETE VIOLIN CONCERTOS AND CELLO CONCERTOS ALBUM ON 5 JULY 202421/5/2024
Lyrita Recorded Edition releasesGeorge Lloyd's Violin Concertos and 'Cello Concerto album on 5 July 2024. The Violin Concertos are performed by Cristina Angeleschu and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by David Parry; the 'Cello Concerto with Anthony Ross and the Albany Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Alan Miller. The Concertos' printed scores (SRMP 0066, 0070 and 0074 and associated sheet music) will be published on 2 August.
'George Lloyd started to learn the violin at the age of five and he was a pupil of the violinist Albert Sammons for six years. Despite his facility in playing the violin and the importance he attached to his lessons with Sammons, Lloyd was slow to compose works for his own instrument. It was not until 1970 that Lloyd wrote Violin Concerto No. 1, his first piece with a leading role for his own instrument, but this achievement seemed to stir his enthusiasm and during the next seven years he completed a number of short pieces for violin and piano, a fully-fledged sonata and a second concerto. Violin Concerto No. 1 was written in 1970 and remained unperformed until the recording featured on this release took place in the summer of 1998. Seven years elapsed before Lloyd wrote a second concerto for the violin. One of Lloyd’s purest, most directly communicative melodies graces the Largo third movement.
The solo instrument’s poetic qualities are to the fore in music of supplicatory spirit. In a couple of ear-catching passages, the soloist’s scrunchy, dissonant chords have the raspy nostalgia of a squeeze box. Lloyd completed his 'Cello Concerto in July 1997, a year before his death at the age of 85 and in this autumnal piece, one can discern a wistful, valedictory quality, with feelings of sorrow and regret surfacing repeatedly. The solo instrument’s inherently lyrical aspect is suited to the composer’s expressive needs, and the one-movement format allows the musical narrative to ebb and flow naturally so that this work has a strong claim to be regarded as Lloyd’s most formally successful concertante piece. A small orchestra is required, consisting of double woodwind, three horns, modest percussion (for one player) and strings.' © Paul Conway 'These two works were recorded during the week before George Lloyd died on July 3, 1998. He was supposed to conduct these performances, but David Parry stepped in at the last minute with the wonderful Romanian violinist Cristina Anghelescu and members of the Philharmonia Orchestra to complete the project. The recording was made in Henry Wood Hall. George was even too ill to attend the sessions, but he was making suggestions as to the best placement of the players to achieve just the recorded sound he wanted 48 hours before his death. This beautiful recording is a fine and lasting memorial to this composer whose music brings such passionate joy to so many music lovers all over the world.' Presto Classical
'Those familiar with Lloyd's warm, spacious, big-hearted, sumptuously orchestrated symphonies won't be disappointed with his violin concertos.' American Record Guide
Electronic press kit and pre-release listening links are available for reviewers from Ulysses Arts.
Nimbus releases Robert Saxton's Epic of Gilgamesh and The Resurrection of the Soldiers (NI 6447) on 5 July 2024 with the English Symphony Orchestra and English String Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Woods.
Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written literary text in Middle Eastern/Western cultural history, predating the Hebrew Bible. The epic relates the story of King Gilgamesh, partly divine, partly human, who may have existed historically circa 2800 BC. From immature youth and a belief in his immortality, he eventually comes to accept the power and reality of Death.
There are five movements/scenes including the Prologue, where the gods try to restore a sense of balance, the journey to the Forest of Cedar in search of glory, and Apotheosis, where Gilgamesh visits Ut Napishti (precursor of Noah in Genesis) who survived the Flood and had been granted immortality by the gods. Gilgamesh fails the final task set by Ut-Napishti to test his suitability for eternal life, returning to Uruk to build his lasting monument, the city walls. The Resurrection of the Soldiers for string orchestra was commissioned by George Vass, to whom it is dedicated, and the English Symphony Orchestra, for the 2016 Presteigne Festival, with funds generously donated by the John S. Cohen Foundation and the Arts Council of England. The title derives from the final panel of Stanley Spencer’s Sandham Chapel visionary series of paintings which were the result of Spencer’s experiences in the British Army in World War One and depicts soldiers emerging from their graves on the last day. The piece is in three continuous parts: a slow, sustained introduction which is, in essence, a descent from the note E by means of a prolation canon, but which ascends to a rather intense climactic point before falling and giving way to a very active fugue which, after arriving at an anguished, sustained climax, is succeeded by a closing slow movement consisting of arising melodic line which permeates the entire texture heterophonically, leading to the closing E major triad. The work thus traces a cyclical path as it progresses towards a sense of resurrection, re-birth and hope. © Robert Saxton
'Full of captivating music-making, two remarkable and compelling compositions, magnificently played.' Guy Rickards, Gramophone, July 2024
'In Scenes from the Epic of Gilgamesh – a work that is subtle yet approachable in its idiom – Saxton reveals an understated orchestral mastery.' Robert Saxton Composer Profile
Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone, 12 July 2024 'The strings cope with some fantastically demanding writing with apparent ease.' Kevin Mandry, British Music Society, 18 July 2024 'Fans of orchestral music will be impressed by this movingly powerful and emotionally charged symphonic poem.' Keith Finke, AllMusic, 2024
Robert Saxton was born in London in 1953. At 21 he won the Gaudeamus International Composers Prize in Holland and was Fulbright Arts Fellow at Princeton in 1986. Now Robert is Emeritus Professor of Composition at Oxford University, Composer-in-Association at the Purcell School, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music.
Robert has been commissioned by the BBC, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Oorchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble, Antara, Arditti and Chilingirian Quartets, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (USA) and written for the Huddersfield, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, City of London, Lichfield and Three Choirs Festivals.
Electronic press kit and listening link available for reviewers from Ulysses Arts.
Lyrita releases Charles Villiers Stanford, Te Deum and Elegiac Ode (SRCD 435) on 5 July 2024 with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, sopranos Rhian Lois and Samantha Price, tenor Alessandro Fisher and baritone Morgan Pearse, conducted by Adrian Partington.
'By the time Stanford had received a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to write a choral work for them in 1884, he had, aged 32, already begun to assert himself as one of Britain’s leading composers. The Elegiac Ode was, however, his first mature foray into the world of major British choral festivals. Some of the Elegiac Ode had been sketched three years earlier in 1881, but after the Norwich commission, Stanford grasped the opportunity to complete it in July 1884. The words were taken from the last part of Walt Whitman’s elegy, ‘When lilacs in the door yard bloom’d’, written after President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. (Stanford’s pupil, Gustav Holst, would use the same text for his Ode to Death after the First World War in 1919.) Taking the seven verses of the burial hymn, Stanford divided his chosen text into four parts, creating a four-movement musical structure more akin to a choral symphony with its substantial and thematically related choral outer movements flanking two shorter inner essays.
Stanford’s large-scale setting of the Te Deum Op. 66 was first sung at the Leeds Festival on 6 October 1898: its ambitious, opulent dimensions were a fitting commemoration of the accession to the throne by Queen Victoria (its dedicatee) sixty years earlier, as well as a tribute to the full-bodied, well-trained Leeds chorus of 350 singers. A particular feature of the Te Deum is the grandeur of much of its choral writing. Though also dramatic, a dominating feature of the Te Deum is its prominent use of the chorus, and the many fulsome sonorities Stanford was able to draw from the magnificent ‘instrument’ of the Leeds voices.' © Jeremy Dibble
'The performances on the disc have a sophistication and vigour that does full justice to the music.'
Planet Hugill, 24 July 2024
SRCD 382: Stanford, Mass 'Via Victrix':
'Rescued from obscurity nearly a century after its composition, Stanford's largescale post-war mass is definitely worth checking out. Impassioned performances here.' BBC Music Magazine Electronic press kit available for reviewers from Ulysses Arts. |
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