William Boughton - 6 Grand Overtures - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Glenn Gould and Friedrich Gulda were almost the same age, Gulda was born in 1930, Gould in 1932. They would both later gain world fame as pianists on both sides of the Atlantic. Both were pianistic superstars in the fifties of the last century and have irritated their audiences with their eccentricity for various reasons. But in their late teens neither one nor the other was foreseeable. Their musical education stood on a broad basis, Gulda, having been a composition pupil of Joseph Marx was closer to late romanticism than the avant-garde, whereas Gould had already discovered his inclination to the Second Viennese School. And so both of them wrote a string quartet before their pianistic careers, which in Gould' case is his Opus 1 (without ever being followed by an Opus 2), while Gulda's work finds it's place within a variety of other student works. What if they had not found their way to the piano? Here the two gifted musicians give two possible answers.

Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3 exudes an essential Russianness reacting both the country's distinctive character and the exiled composer's nostalgia for the homeland he left in 1917. Contrastingly, the natural beauty of Rachmaninoff's country estate, Ivanovka, is evoked in 10 Songs, delicately orchestrated by the grandfather of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor Vladimir Jurowski and sung here by Vsevolod Grivnov. Jurowski conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in live concert recordings of this fascinating combination of works.

Stromme - Song Dust [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/18/2022