Wordsworth / Arnicane / Gibbons - Orchestral Music 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With Vieni, dolce Imeneo, La Compagnia del Madrigale make another important halt on their compelling journey across the territory of Italian secular song with a disc devoted to one of the most significant, yet these days somewhat bypassed, composers Cipriano de Rore. de Rore was a Fleming who enjoyed great success notably in the Italian courts of Ferrara and Parma - but with a prestige which extended up and across Europe. He composed in many genres, but it is the secular madrigal - recorded here - where his skill was most valued, for example in creating extended and expressive melodic lines coupled with innovatory pre-echoes of the seconda pratica so triumphantly expressed - albeit amidst great criticism - by Claudio Monteverdi. Recordings - all also on Glossa - of madrigals by Marenzio, Gesualdo and Monteverdi have already demonstrated musical pleasures such as an uncommon vocal blend and delicacy, and a meticulous dynamic control exhibited by the richly-experienced members of La Compagnia del Madrigale, and those delights are to be experienced with these 19 madrigals by Cipriano de Rore, composed late in his career. With texts by Petrarch, Ariosto and assorted court poets for these madrigals, essay-writer Marco Bizzarini highlights one of the principal characteristic features of de Rore's mastery when he points to the disc's title track, Vieni, dolce Imeneo the ideal union between poetry and music.

Stereolab announce a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, available on 23rd May 2025, co-released by the band's own tag Duophonic UHF Disks, and Warp Records. Their first new record in fifteen years, it features thirteen songs written by Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane; performed by Laetitia, Tim, Andy Ramsay, Joe Watson and Xavi Muñoz, who comprise the current touring line-up of the band. - The album also features guest contributions by Cooper Crain and Rob Frye (Bitchin Bajas), Ben LaMar Gay (International Anthem), Ric Elsworth, Holger Zapf (Cavern Of Anti-Matter), Marie Merlet and Molly Hansen Read.

The music of William Wordsworth (1908-88) - a great-great-grandson of the poet's brother Christopher - lies downstream from that of Vaughan Williams and Sibelius; like that of his contemporary Edmund Rubbra, Wordsworth's music unfolds spontaneously, as a natural process. This third volume of his orchestral works brings two major scores in their first studio recordings. Wordsworth's Cello Concerto is a work of symphonic proportions, blending angular rough-and-tumble with a sober lyricism in a style that sits somewhere between Shostakovich and Bloch. The Fifth Symphony has an even grander sense of scale, it's radiant first movement and the introduction to the confident finale unfolding as calmly and unhurriedly as a change of season; the martial tone of the gruff scherzo, by contrast, is laced through by an impish sense of humour. John Gibbons has conducted most of the major British orchestras. He has been Principal Conductor of Worthing Symphony Orchestra - the professional orchestra of West Sussex - with which he has given many world premieres of neglected works. He studied music at Queens' College, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, winning numerous awards as conductor, pianist and accompanist. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, vice chairman of the British Music Society, and choral director at Clifton Cathedral. His own music has been performed in various abbeys and cathedrals as well as on the South Bank, London.