Orchestra Orfeo - Sibelius, Britten, Barber & Part: Romanza - Music for Strings - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This album features two compositionsby Jean Sibelius from differentmoments in the Finnish musician's life.The Impromptu Op.5 for stringensemble is an early work from 1894, inwhich Sibelius uses some thematicmaterials from his solo pianoimpromptus Nos. 5 and 6 from the Op.5set. The Romance in C Op.42 (1903) wascomposed during a difficult phase in thecomposer's life caused by excessivealcohol consumption, which promptedhim to leave Helsinki and move with hiswife near to Lake Tuusula, where hecould dedicate himself to compositionfar from the temptations of the Finnishcapital. The piece is divided into shortsections in which the melodic ideasarise from fragments of the octatonic,or diminished, scale of alternatingwhole and half steps supported bydissonant harmonies that add furthertonal instability.Samuel Barber's typically inspiredmelodic vein emerges from the verybeginning in his Serenade Op.1 for StringQuartet or String Orchestra, dating from 1928.Featuring chromaticism's and dissonantpassages, a duality is established between afirst, rhythmic and impetuous thematic ideaand a lyrical melody. The final movementbrings greater serenity and joy through thechoice of a major mode and the adoption of agraceful and leaping theme whose fragmentspass in counterpoint between one voice andanother.When Benjamin Britten composed his SimpleSymphony Op.4 he was just 20 years old, andhe describes the idea in an introduction to thescore 'This InchSimple SymphonyInch is entirelybased on material from works which thecomposer wrote between the ages of nineand twelve [.]. Although the development ofthese themes is in many places quite new,there are large stretches of the work whichare taken bodily from the early pieces - savefor the re-scoring for strings'. In effect, Brittenextrapolates eight themes from his juvenilecompositional production, associates two ofthem with each movement and cr