As a great admirer of the music of William Wordsworth I was delighted to hear recently that John Gibbon, the conductor, had returned to Liepaja in Latvia to record the third volume in Toccata's survey of the composer's music.
What was not clear was which works would be included on the cd.
This information is now available thanks to an advert on Naxos Direct:
https://naxosdirect.co.uk/items/william-wordsworth-orchestral-music-vol.-3-559699 I was initially a little disappointed to find that the cd will contain the Symphony No.5 given that the work featured on a relatively recent Lyrita disc. The performance Lyrita revived however was a BBC broadcast from 1979. The new recording should show this magnificent, glowing work in modern sound quality. There is nothing (pace Cilgwyn!) "grey" about Wordsworth's orchestration in what may well be his masterpiece.
Also on the cd is the Cello Concerto. This means that Gibbons and the excellent Liepaja Symphony Orchestra will have recorded all three of Wordsworth's concertos and will add another previously unrecorded British cello concerto to the discography. (We are still waiting for the Lennox Berkeley (1939), Gordon Jacob (1955), Wilfred Josephs (1962), Arnold Cooke (1973), Daniel Jones (1986), Arthur Butterworth (1997) and John McCabe (2007)-although only the Butterworth is not currently available for download here.)
The new Toccata cd will be issued in July. I hope that the Symphony No.7 "Cosmos" will follow and that it might even be possible to record Wordsworth's unperformed choral Symphony No.6 "Elegiaca" composed in memory of his son who was tragically killed in a car accident.
