Philharmonia Orchestra - Symphony No. 2 / Symphony No. 4 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Philharmonia Orchestra - Symphony 7 & 8 [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/23/2010

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the tag debut of the acclaimed British composer Howard Blake with a disc of his orchestral music to mark his 85th birthday. Blake himself is heard at the piano and conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, with Paul Daniel also conducting the English Northern Philharmonia. Internationally recognised as the composer of The Snowman's 'Walking on Air', Blake's prolific and wide-ranging achievements extend into symphonies, concertos, oratorios and music for solo piano to embrace the concert hall, dance stage and cinema screen. This focus on his orchestral music which includes four first recordings begins with his single- movement Symphony No.1 in it's 1990 revision, a richly variegated work of vivid images and, as it's title has it, Impressions of a City. A work of dazzling, multi-faceted dimensions and execution, it is, writes Robert Matthew-Walker in his authoritative booklet notes, an Inchorganic, truly symphonic, composition from a genuine creative figureInch. Concert Dances, for piano and orchestra, from 1992 and featuring Blake conducting from the piano, comprises nine relatively short dance movements in various styles to vivacious effect. Alluding to Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1979's The Court of Love is a ravishing concert suite of three movements drawn from Blake's ballet score for choreographer Lynn Seymour marking Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee two years previously. The suite taken from his soundtrack to the 1987 film A Month in the Country shows Blake at his most exquisite and expressive in a score, says Matthew-Walker, that Inchsurely belongs in any collection of 20th-century English music for string orchestraInch. SOMM's long championing of British composers includes recent discs devoted to Stephen Dodgson (SOMMCD 0659; 0673), Penelope Thwaites (SOMMCD 0612; 0672), Kenneth Leighton (SOMMCD 0667), Holst (SOMMCD 279), Ian

Marking their latest collaboration with their conductor laureate Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Philharmonia have returned to recording with a stellar live-performance of Rachmaninov's ebullient Symphony No.2 in E Minor. This is the second in a new series of Rachmaninov's symphonies, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy in live performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The first of Symphony No. 1 (SIGCD484) was met by critical acclaim InchPerhaps the most satisfying of all [Ashkenazy's recordings of the Symphony]...Inch (BBC Music Magazine) InchAshkenazy knows how to shape detail and soar in the big melodic moments. The Philharmonia sound is muscular and alert, from the opening woodwind solos to the mighty, stirring symphonic tutti of the finale.Inch (The Observer)