Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1847-1935)

[Albion]

A new thread for this wonderful composer. Several orchestral discs on Hyperion and Chris Howells' piano series on Sheva have shown the worth of his talent. Just listening to the excerpts from his dramatic oratorio The Rose of Sharon (1884), we need a full professional recording of this work. The National Lottery should be able to provide the wherewithal...

 ::)

[Albion]

Here is a discography of larger-scale works:

Overture The Cricket on the Hearth, Twelfth Night, Benedictus, Burns, Coriolanus (Brabbins, Hyperion CDA66764)
Violin Concerto, Pibroch (Handley/ Davies, Hyperion CDA66975)
Scottish Piano Concerto (Brabbins, Hyperion CDA67023)
Overture The Little Minister (Gamba, Chandos CHAN10797)
Overture Britannia (Gamba, Chandos CHAN10898)
Prelude to Colomba (Bostock, RLPO Live RLCD301)

In addition, the broadcast archive has important scores including the Rhapsodie Écossaise, the Canadian Rhapsody and the overture Youth, Sport, Loyalty as well as alternative performances of both the violin and piano concertos.

Mackenzie’s orchestral music has been relatively well-served by modern revival. He was a pioneer of the Rhapsody genre in Britain several decades before Stanford. Significant scores are the first Scottish Rhapsody, Rhapsodie Écossaise (1879), the second Scottish Rhapsody, Burns (1881), La belle dame sans merci (1883), the Violin Concerto (1884-85), Twelfth Night (1888), Pibroch for violin and orchestra (1889), From the North (1894), the nautical overture Britannia (1894), the Scottish Piano Concerto (1896-97), The Little Minister (overture and incidental music, 1897), Coriolanus (incidental music, 1901), the suite London Day-by-Day (1902), the Canadian Rhapsody (1904), the Suite for Violin and Orchestra (1906-07) and the third Scottish Rhapsody, Tam o’Shanter (1911). Of these, the Rhapsodie Écossaise,  From the North, and the last four still await commercial release. London Day-by-Day is the closest that Mackenzie came to implied symphonism (vide the symphonic suites by Edward German and George Whitefield Chadwick) and concludes with a helter-skelter set of virtuosic variations on the Westminster Chimes.

 :)

[Grandenorm]

Don't  forget La Belle Dame sans Merci which Cameo Classics recorded with the Malta Philharmonic under Michael Laus, now reissued on Lyrita.

[cilgwyn]

It would be nice to hear his Cricket on the Hearth opera one day!

[Albion]

Don't  forget La Belle Dame sans Merci which Cameo Classics recorded with the Malta Philharmonic under Michael Laus, now reissued on Lyrita.

Yes, another fine work from Mackenzie's most productive period, the 1880s, when he wrote some of his best music including the rhapsody Burns (1880), the opera Colomba (1883), the oratorio The Rose of Sharon (1884), the Violin Concerto (1885), the overture Twelfth Night (1888) and the cantata The Dream of Jubal (1889).

It would be nice to hear his Cricket on the Hearth opera one day!

Indeed. The overture (recorded by Hyperion) is really splendid, and the vocal score reveals an opera that fully deserves professional revival. It benefits from an expert adaptation of Dickens by Julian Sturgis who also provided the libretti for Sullivan's Ivanhoe (1890-91) and Stanford's Much Ado About Nothing (1900-01).

 :)