LUTYENS; MACONCHY; WALLEN Works for Piano and Orchestra
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Resonus Classics
Magazine Review Date: 06/2023
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 59
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: RES10315
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Dialogue for Piano and Orchestra |
Elizabeth Maconchy, Composer
BBC Concert Orchestra John Andrews, Conductor Martin Jones, Piano |
Eos |
(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Composer
BBC Concert Orchestra John Andrews, Conductor Martin Jones, Piano |
Music for Piano and Orchestra |
(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Composer
BBC Concert Orchestra John Andrews, Conductor Martin Jones, Piano |
Piano Concerto |
Errollyn Wallen, Composer
BBC Concert Orchestra John Andrews, Conductor Rebeca Omordia, Piano |
Author: Guy Rickards
Elizabeth Maconchy composed three works for piano and orchestra, including two concertinos (Lorelt, 1/12; Lyrita, 6/22). Dialogue (1940 41) lies midway between but, while sharing some similarities of style with them, eschews their neoclassical demeanour and elements of display. The clue is in the title: soloist (here the excellent Martin Jones) and orchestra discuss rather than debate with no element of competition, more in the manner of chamber music. Dialogue’s dark, full scoring gives it a different colouring and more serious sound world, despite occasional reminiscences of her former teacher, Vaughan Williams, to the concertinos.
The pair of Lutyens works featured here are strongly contrasted. In the evocative Eos (1975), named for the ancient Greek ‘personification of dawn’ and sister of Helios, the piano is integrated within the ensemble. Eos is, arguably, the nearest thing to a tone poem in Lutyens’s catalogue and utterly different from Music for Piano and Orchestra of a decade earlier. Its severe textures, abstract lines and at times glaring focus on the piano as the primary element in its discourse are rendered with precision and sensitivity by Jones.
Rebeca Omordia takes over the keyboard for Errollyn Wallen’s very recent (2020) Piano Concerto. Opening with more than a nod to Ravel’s G major, it quickly shifts idiom, especially in the complex second movement (almost as long as the other three combined), into jazz and the blues. The finale, ‘Joyful’, shifts again to folk music, with a sârba from Omordia’s home town in Romania. Wallen is an accomplished pianist in her own right, so her writing is beautifully laid out for the instrument. Omordia has its measure, as well as Wallen’s coruscating expressiveness. The BBC Concert Orchestra, relishing the chance to stretch themselves with something weightier than their normal repertoire, provide spot-on accompaniments throughout under John Andrews’s firm direction. Resonus’s clear sound is splendid.
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