Grainger Edition, Vol. 3 - Works for Chorus & Orchestra 1

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Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger

Label: Grainger Edition

Magazine Review Date: 1/1997

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 61

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: CHAN9499

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
Shallow Brown	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor Stephen Varcoe, Baritone
Marching tune	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
I'm seventeen come Sunday	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
Shenandoah	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor Stephen Varcoe, Baritone
Stormy	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor Stephen Varcoe, Baritone
Molly on the shore	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Richard Hickox, Conductor
Brigg Fair	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Mark Padmore, Tenor Richard Hickox, Conductor
Early one morning	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Richard Hickox, Conductor Stephen Varcoe, Baritone
After-word	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
There was a pig went out to dig	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
(The) lonely desert-man sees the tents of the happ	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Mark Padmore, Tenor Richard Hickox, Conductor
Thou gracious power	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
Irish Tune from County Derry	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor
Handel in the Strand	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Penelope Thwaites, Piano Richard Hickox, Conductor
Six dukes went afishin'	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Duke Dobing, Flute Richard Hickox, Conductor
Rudyard Kipling Settings, Movement: Anchor song (bar, male vv, pf/orch. 1899-1905, rev	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer Joyful Company of Singers Leslie Pearson, Piano Richard Hickox, Conductor Stephen Varcoe, Baritone
Ye banks and braes o' Bonnie Doon	(George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer (George) Percy (Aldridge) Grainger, Composer City of London Sinfonia Joyful Company of Singers Richard Hickox, Conductor

Author: Edward Greenfield

This third disc in Chandos’s Grainger series (the first two were reviewed in 11/96) brings another triumph for Richard Hickox, who – as in his first disc of orchestral pieces – captures the exuberance of the composer’s inspiration, his joy in sound, his delight in taking the listener by surprise. That was equally so in John Eliot Gardiner’s Gramophone Award-winning disc of choral pieces for Philips, but the overlap of items here is minimal. Most importantly, both discs include Shallow Brown, and though Hickox has less prominent janglings in the accompaniment, he has a clear advantage in opting for an excellent baritone soloist (Stephen Varcoe) instead of a rather uncertain soprano, with an equally fine choral ensemble. Hickox and Gardiner are more evenly matched in the lusciously chromatic setting of Brigg Fair, with the Joyful Company of Singers again matching the Monteverdi Choir in finesse, but Hickox’s version of the Irish tune from County Derry (Londonderry Air) is quite different from Gardiner’s for he has chosen a more extended, much more elaborate setting made in 1920, lasting a full seven minutes in gradual crescendo, the longest item in the disc.
That is listed as a “premiere recording in this version”, and Barry Ould’s notes are excellent in giving chapter and verse about Grainger’s much-revised texts. Ye banks and braes is another item given in a verion previously unrecorded, with a whistled descant. Completely new to disc are the Marching tune (a Lincolnshire folk-tune made to sound like a lusty Salvation Army chorus with brass accompaniment), and Early one morning (with a minor-key cello solo as introduction, before dawn comes up with the tune in the major, when baritone and chorus enter, later with intertwining descants from violin and trumpet). Also new to disc are After-word and the setting of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thou gracious power, both in effect hymns, and the Kipling setting, Anchor song, here given in its final, most elaborate version.
Quite apart from the novelties, Hickox has made me notice details I had missed before in well-known pieces, as for example the cow-mooing in clarinet over jingles in Molly on the shore (track 6, 2'08''). I has never registered either the full originality of The lonely desert-man sees the tents of the happy tribes, here given a dedicated performance, with the tenor intoning a theme from Grainger’s orchestral piece, The Warriors, and the distant chorus chattering a chant borrowed fron his Tribute to Foster, the culminating item on the Gardiner disc. I have no hesitation in recommending this Chandos issue alongside Gardiner’s as one of the very finest, most invigorating discs we have yet had of Grainger’s music.'