THOMAS PITFIELD: Orchestral Music

Jun 22, 2025 | CD reviews

Liepaja Symphony OrchestraPaul Mann conductorEmma McGrath violin Toccata Classics TOCC 0765 [75] This important release builds on the success of the recordings of Thomas Pitfield’s chamber and vocal music that recently appeared on the Divine Art label. With the...

Bite-Back: it’s not a second hand book!

Jun 20, 2025 | News

I am grateful to Dr Strachan for his generally favourable and fair review of my book: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: English Composer (26 May 2025 | Book reviews). In his review it was good to read relevant and amusing information on, for instance, Parry, that was new to...

BRIAN ANDREW INGLIS: To Byzantium and Beyond

Jun 20, 2025 | CD reviews

Elizabeth Knatt & Rachel Barnes recorders KAIROS 0022034KAI The two electronic pieces on this fascinating disc might be described as mood music of the kind that is regularly encountered on Radio 3’s Night Tracks. I found the shortest, Burmese Memory, to be the...

Panufnik Legacies IV

Jun 20, 2025 | CD reviews

London Symphony OrchestraJack Sheen conductor LSO LIVE 5135 This is the fourth CD resulting from the LSO’s Discovery programme showcasing new composers, guided by Colin Matthews (whose own mastery of orchestration was doubtless most useful). Most of the figures...

July release for one act opera

Jun 19, 2025 | News

The Parlour, an opera in one act by Grace Williams, will be released on 4 July. The Arts Council’s Welsh Committee approached Grace Williams in 1959 with the offer of a commission to write a one-act opera. The composer turned to the French satirist Guy de Maupassant’s...

Cardiff music cuts reversed

Jun 19, 2025 | News

Cardiff University has reversed its controversial decision to scrap its music course as part of wide-ranging cuts affecting a range of courses and the potential loss of some 400 jobs.  Wales’s largest university backed down in the face of protests from staff,...

When I was One-and-Twenty: English Song

Jun 19, 2025 | CD reviews

By C.W. Orr and his contemporaries Ben Alden tenor Andrew Plant piano    CD available at www.ben-alden.com The background to this disc is given in its subtitle ‘A celebration of love and the English Landscape underpinned by the poetry of...

BARRY MILLS: Unfoldings Volume 10

Jun 19, 2025 | CD reviews

Ensemble RezaThe Barefaced Violas CLAUDIO Contemporary  CC6054-2  Unfoldings, the 10th volume of music by Barry Mills (b. 1949) contains five String Quartets, one String Quintet (an extra viola) and one Viola Quartet. The overall title Unfoldings, comes from the final...

HOLST: The Planets and Earth

Jun 19, 2025 | CD reviews

Melbourne Symphony OrchestraJaime Martin conductor  MSO 0003 It is now 25 years since Colin Matthews produced his masterful Pluto, the Renewer to append to Holst’s wondrous score. In his second recording of the main work (2006), Simon Rattle also added four more...

WILLIAM BOUGHTON: A celebration on record

Jun 17, 2025 | CD reviews

English String OrchestraEnglish Symphony OrchestraBBC National Orchestra of WalesWilliam Boughton conductor NIMBUS RECORDS NI 1712 This is a budget-priced four-disc set in celebration of the conductor’s distinguished career. The tracks were recorded in different...