cilgwyn
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So - imagine you have won the lottery and have lots of cash in hand. You can go to Chandos and order up one complete symphony cycle. They have Martyn Brabbins and the BBCSSO lined up and ready to go. Who will you pick? Piston, Diamond and Holbrooke have all been mentioned, but you have to settle on one. I'm sure there are other names worthy of consideration - what about Butterworth, for instance?
I'd love some more Holbrooke. Apollo and the Seaman. I would also like to hear his Symphony No.5 in E flat, Wild Wales,because I live there!! But i'm not sure that his symphonies really do deserve a complete cycle. Not that I'm against the idea of more being recorded,but I don't think the symphony was really his forte,and this would be my dosh!! Also,I gather some of them are lost!! :( I would really like a top notch Charles Tournemire symphony cycle. The available recordings are either terrible or quite good. I feel they are interesting works and he has his own sound world. It is a shame that such an ambitious French symphony cycle doesn't get more attention. I'm not convinced by all of them;but even the weakest are intriguing. After that I would love a complete Lev Knipper symphony cycle. Actually,I'm joking!! ;D As Dundonnell observes,Brabbins tends to specialise in British music so I would probably pay for a Fricker cycle! I might also pay for a Louis Glass symphony cycle,as Cpo are taking so long......but as soon as the cycle appeared sods law states that they'd just happen to resume theirs!! ::) ;D
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Dundonnell
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Ruth Gipps
I would have no difficulty with that choice :)
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Dundonnell
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Listening again to the Ruth Gipps 2nd on the Classico cd I can go further in support of Gareth
Of course if a number of us got our way we could have sets of Hamilton, Gipps, Fricker, Wordsworth...and we could probably add Alun Hoddinott and John McCabe to the list. That would keep Martyn Brabbins busy for some time
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Elroel
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So - imagine you have won the lottery and have lots of cash in hand.
I wouldn't go for any of the mentioned. not because the works are not of interest, but simply: they are already recorded, and so many are not. It would give me a pleasure to see that a number of symphonies by "younger" composers were issued. Composer's like the norwegian Filip Sande, who wrote a large number of works, that are not yet heard from a live orchestra only for the reason of money. It's far too costly to have a work recorded.
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Dundonnell
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I have just listened again to the Antheil Symphony No.4 which I had not heard for some time. My first acquaitance with the work was on an old Everest LP conducted by Sir Eugene Goossens.
I had remembered it as very World War Two Shostakovich Leningrad Symphony tub-thumping rhetoric. It is all that but now I find it exhausting and actually tiresomely so. It is not a symphony I shall wish to return to soon. The "Bad Boy" of music wrote a "not very good" symphony in his 4th :(
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Gauk
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Antheil's 5th Symphony, on the other hand, which I have on an old LP incongruously paired with a work by Maxwell Davies, shamelessly plagiarises Prokofiev. It's fun, though.
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relm1
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I really enjoyed the new Chandos recording. The key to this is seeing Antheil as a bridge between Ives and Copeland. His No. 4 reminds me a lot of Ives's Symphony No. 2 with its overt use of American themes or in a polyphonic way such as Ive's Three Places from New England. Listen to this first:
Then listen to Antheil No. 4. Yes you'll hear Russian elements but American too. That is part of his distinctiveness. I hear Russian and Finnish influences in Malcolm Arnold but he is also very distinctive. In some places Arnold has a lot of the English tradition but in other places, very Russian but consistently of high quality. This is how I hear Antheil and I am very glad for this new series from Chandos. His sound does deserve to be better heard and hopefully this will do it.
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