| CLASSICO - British Symphonic Collection | ||
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Catalogue Number: CLASSCD274 | |
| Price: £13.50 | ||
The British Symphonic Collection Volume 4 ARTHUR BUTTERWORTH: Symphony Number 1 Munich Symphony Orchestra Douglas Bostock, conductor |
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REVIEWS ****rating in the Penguin Guide “...this is an issue which no one interested in this period of British music should miss.” John Kersey, International Record Review
Gramophone Magazine "….Bostock delivers strong performances. Well worth exploring - Ian Lace - BBC Music Magazine "The Munich Symphony, with expert guidance from Douglas Bostock, play these two world premiere recordings as if their lives depend on it." |
Ruth Gipps (1923-1999) devoted her whole life to music but her contribution to British Music is largely uncelebrated, which is something of a tragedy given that her vision, enthusiasm and practical and artistic contributions to the British music scene were considerable. She was a gifted performer on piano and oboe and a composer of considerable stature and output. Gipps studied composition at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams (a great influence on her own style) and Gordon Jacob, and the oboe with Leon Goossens. During the War she established close ties with Birmingham where she was a full-time orchestral musician with the C.B.S.O., which premiered many of her works including her 2nd Symphony. Her compositions, though popular with audiences, were not really given the attention which they deserved emerging as they did at a time when the musical establishment was veering towards serialism and the avante-garde developments in the 60's and 70's and before its hostile attitude to women composers had begun to change. Ruth Gipps died only recently aged 78.
Arthur Butterworth M.B.E. has been well-known as a composer in his native North of England for many years. His first two symphonies were premiered by the Halle Orchestra (under Barbirolli and Boult, respectively), and the Symphony No. 1 also featured in a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in 1958. Butterworth has composed significant works for the thriving Brass Band tradition, in addition to concertos for Organ, Cello and Violin - the latter given it's professional premiere by Nigel Kennedy - and numerous other orchestral and chamber works, a recently completed string quartet being his 100th opus! Born in Manchester in 1923, Butterworth entered the Royal Manchester College of Music after the war, at the age of 24, to study composition and trumpet. His mature compositional style is influenced primarily by Sibelius, Nielsen, Elgar and other English composers of a previous generation. The north country, its poetry and its art is the major inspirational source of Butterworth's music. |
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