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Burgon: Viola Concerto; Cello Concerto; Merciless Beauty - Gamba, Connolly, Dukes, Knight, City Of London Sinfonia (2010)

Posted By: peotuvave
Burgon: Viola Concerto; Cello Concerto; Merciless Beauty - Gamba, Connolly, Dukes, Knight, City Of London Sinfonia (2010)

Burgon: Viola Concerto; Cello Concerto; Merciless Beauty - Gamba, Connolly, Dukes, Knight, City Of London Sinfonia (2010)
X Lossless Decoder | Flac (Tracks + cue + log) | 1 CD | Full Scans | 253 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Chandos | Catalog Number: 10592

Chandos releases premiere recordings of Geoffrey Burgon’s viola and cello concertos, alongside the song cycle Merciless Beauty, all performed by the City of London Sinfonia under Rumon Gamba. For a generation and more of television watchers and filmgoers with even a passing interest in music, the name of the British composer Geoffrey Burgon is associated with a string of successful soundtrack scores: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Chronicles of Narnia and many others. His masterful score for Brideshead Revisited, described as ‘the greatest score ever written for television’, earned him an Ivor Novello Award. However, ‘concert music’ has always been the main thrust of his work which, whilst being sophisticated in structure, speaks powerfully and directly to audiences and musicians alike. Burgon’s love of the voice has led him to write probably more song-cycles than any other living composer and these successes have tended to overshadow his smaller output of purely orchestral music. This new album helps to rectify that imbalance with two premiere recordings.

Burgon has written successful choral and vocal works throughout his career, which have tended to overshadow his smaller output of purely orchestral music. This new album helps to rectify the imbalance. Merciless Beauty, originally for counter-tenor, is here, at the invitation of the composer, sung by the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly. The Viola Concerto Ghosts of the Dance was commissioned by Philip Dukes, who here performs the solo part. Burgon writes: ‘Whilst writing it I felt the music being pulled in the direction of thirties American dance music. Then I got a strong image of a dance hall in a small American town, where a dance endurance competition was taking place. These were a feature of the depression era in the US.’ The album is completed by the Cello Concerto, inspired by Alexander Kok, the last surviving founder member of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and completed with advice concerning the solo part from Josephine Knight who here gives the work its premiere performance.

Composer: Geoffrey Burgon
Performer: Philip Dukes, Josephine Knight, Sarah Connolly
Conductor: Rumon Gamba
Orchestra/Ensemble: City of London Sinfonia

Reviews: Burgon’s concert works ( Requiem (Decca); Choral Music) are not encountered quite so often but those who followed the ASV label – said to be making a come-back - will know of CDDCA1059 which runs to 66:08 and offers composer-directed recordings of his Merciless Beauty; A Vision; The Calm and Voices from The Calm. The artists were James Bowman (counter-tenor), Neil Jenkins (tenor), Kenneth Sillito (violin), Mark David (trumpet), Hugh Webb (harp) and the City of London Sinfonia (as here) and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Now along comes this luxuriously recorded and unapologetically ambitious Chandos disc presenting two recent Burgon concertos. With them, from a decade before the concertos, comes an alternatively-voiced Merciless Beauty. This time it comes with Sarah Connolly’s sable-toned mezzo rather than James Bowman’s counter-tenor from the ASV disc.

That Burgon’s career has jazz woven into and around it is also evident in the two concertos if not in Merciless Beauty. The sting, sway and tizz of drum-kit and alto sax is part of the fabric of the Viola Concerto which was written for and dedicated to Philip Dukes. It’s in three movements of which the first has a cool jazz bass and percussion underpinning over which the viola takes its accustomed course as the melancholy but not undynamic country singer. That pensive aspect is to the fore in the central movement before the drum-kit establishes a redolence with the dance marathons of 1930s USA: dance till you drop - last couple still dancing wins. Lots of transparently presented, clever and biting percussion amid the orchestral canvas partner the classic ochre-toned English pastoral element.

The anthologised song-cycle with orchestra is a standard format within English music. Merciless Beauty stands beside such masterworks as Geoffrey Bush’s Summer Serenade (Chandos CHAN8864) and Carey Blyton’s Lachrymae (Upbeat URCD179). And that’s without looking to Britten. Of the seven songs four are by Kit White. The first is The Western Wind which finds Connolly sturdy and steady of tone even when called on to soar. In The Letter to Anne Pregnant the rise and fall of the solo line resonates with the vocal writing in Holst’s Choral Symphony without being anywhere nears a luxuriantly frondy. Blake’s Rose has been set before – by Britten and most affectingly of all by Geoffrey Bush in Summer Serenade. Burgon’s has a concentrated incantatory quality. Tune for an Ice Cream Van is irresistible with its masterly progress swift and full of mercurial enchantment. It’s an enchanting song and its sudden delays and rushes sometimes recall the more clever moments in Sondheim. We return to incantation for Merciless Beauty – a Chaucer poem also set by RVW. Iron City Lover is short and quick-flowing. Its affecting simplicity is equivalent to that of another roundelay: the song in RVW’s Wenlock Edge cycle, Oh When I was in Love With You. The masterly Campionesque for Anna is a sensuous love song coasting transcendentally close to tears.

The Cello Concerto was written for the cellist Alexander Kok (b. 1923 and the brother of Felix Kok, for years Leader of the CBSO) but he had retired from playing by the time the work was complete. Josephine Knight is now its first champion. It takes its inspiration from black and white Film Noir – the same source that inspired John Adams’ recently premiered orchestral work Film Noir. A Nyman-style chugging pulse, deep down and suave, interacts subtly with the cello as it pads and sings. The genre includes Rozsa’s Brute Force and this work has some of that ruthless power and neon disillusion. The finale is extremely compelling with a strong theme atmospherically presented. Again the psychological locale is established by the acid-spit insistence of the drum-kit and by the romantic tendrils thrown out at 5:51. This is thoughtful writing: plangent, faintly minatory and gleaming in the reflected sun of Kodaly and Rozsa. Interesting that the two concertos each reference aspects the nostalgic popular culture of the USA.

For me all three works coast around the boundaries of night, sleep and dream. They have been most beautifully and lovingly recorded so that every skein and line can be heard. This is a tribute to Burgon, to the CLS principals and to the Chandos team.

I see, from Anthony Burton’s substantial liner-note, that Burgon has also written a full-scale opera based on Dickens’ Hard Times. That’s something we should hear as also his concertos for piano and for percussion.

Tracklisting:

1. Concerto for Viola "Ghosts of the Dance" by Geoffrey Burgon
Performer: Philip Dukes (Viola)
Conductor: Rumon Gamba
Orchestra/Ensemble: City of London Sinfonia
Written: 2008

2. Concerto for Cello by Geoffrey Burgon
Performer: Josephine Knight (Cello)
Conductor: Rumon Gamba
Orchestra/Ensemble: City of London Sinfonia
Period: 21st Century
Written: 2007; England

3. Merciless Beauty by Geoffrey Burgon
Performer: Sarah Connolly (Mezzo Soprano)
Conductor: Rumon Gamba
Orchestra/Ensemble: City of London Sinfonia
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1996; England

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Thanks to the original releaser