Sir Richard Rodney Bennett: Orchestral Works Vol. 4

Part of the success of the concertos performance certainly lies in Michael McHale’s high-energy fingers, confidently shifting between glittering decorations and bravura solo spurts. Meanwhile,... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2020, More…

Release Date: 1st May 2020
Catalogue No: CHSA5244
Label: Chandos
Length: 65 minutes

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Bennett, R R: Troubadour Music

4:29

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson

Bennett, R R: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

24:22

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$8.75

Michael McHale (piano)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson

I. Moderato

8:42

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II. Presto

4:24

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III. Lento

6:36

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IV. Vivo

4:40

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Bennett, R R: Aubade for Orchestra

9:06

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson

Bennett, R R: Country Dances Book 1

10:50

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson

No. 1, Buskin

1:46

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No. 2, A New Dance

3:08

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No. 3, Enfield Common

0:52

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No. 4, Chelsea Reach

3:10

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No. 5, Nobody's Jig

1:54

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Bennett, R R: Anniversaries

16:56

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson

I. Vivo e dellamato

1:21

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II. Episode I

3:07

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III. Episode II

3:26

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IV. Episode III

3:26

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V. Episode IV

2:58

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VI. Episode V

1:33

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VII. Finale. Vivo e declamato

1:05

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In this fourth volume in their Richard Rodney Bennett series, John Wilson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra turn to his Piano Concerto, commissioned by the John Feeney Trust for the CBSO and written in 1968. A chance meeting with Stephen Kovacevich provided Bennett with a willing soloist, and the work was premiered in Birmingham in September that year. The fellow composer Anthony Payne’s judgment was unequivocal: ‘It’s a bloody good work.’ The soloist here, Michael McHale, gives a virtuosic performance which certainly lives up to that judgment. Commissioned in 1982 for the sixtieth anniversary of the BBC, Anniversaries is the other major work on this recording. A brilliantly virtuosic concerto for orchestra, the eleven-section work loosely follows the form of a theme and variations, although it also shows glimpses of a symphonic structure. Dedicated to his close friend Irwin Bazelon who was also sixty that year, the score is a playful and joyous celebration, as well as an orchestral tour de force. In the 1990s, his decision to quit smoking led Bennett to experience a serious creative block. He found a route out of this by immersing himself in English baroque and mediaeval music. The Country Dances (Book 1) are based on folk dances from John Playford’s anthology The English Dancing Master. Troubadour Music was written for John Mauceri’s final season at the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and is based on the thirteenth-century minstrel song ‘Volez Vous Que Je Vous Chant’. Recorded in SS.

Reviews

July 2020

Part of the success of the concertos performance certainly lies in Michael McHale’s high-energy fingers, confidently shifting between glittering decorations and bravura solo spurts. Meanwhile, John Wilson and his BBC musicians are fully a match for Bennett’s nervous rhythms and the melodic urge that won’t be denied, for all the work’s surface ‘modernity’. It’s a really memorable and thoroughly exhilarating piece.

September/October 2020

Michael McHale...gives a sensitive, fluent, and sensitive reading of the solo part of the concerto. McHale is brilliantly supported by the orchestra under John Wilson, whose recordings are adding a wealth of gripping music-making to our CD or download libraries. Recording quality is in the best standards of the house. I thoroughly recommend this whole series, a worthy tribute to a composer who passed away in 2012.

July 2020

As always, the technique and composerly gamesmanship of his pieces consistently dazzles...And really all one can ask of performers – and John Wilson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra deliver in spades – is a precision and virtuosity for music that sounds like it’s evolving in the playing of it. Keep it coming.

3rd May 2020

Wilson’s survey of Bennett’s concert works continues to surprise and delight.

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett: Orchestral Works Vol. 4

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