British Chamber, Instrumental and Song

[BBMmk2]

With this current month being given over to british music in general, I thought it be a good way, of starting a thread of britiosh music on the smaller scale.

What are boarders favourite recordings, performers etc?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Um, quite a lot to list. The Elgar chamber works. Quartets - and a lot else - by Britten, Bridge, Maxwell Davies, Walton. Bax pf 5tet. Far too many Naxos CDs by the Maggini 4tet...

Song: RVW, Warlock, Holst, F G Scott, Finzi, Butterworth, Rubbra, Sommervell, Stanford, Parry and many many more. Don't get me started!

[EdgeleyRob]

Maggini Quartet playing the String Quartets of Bliss,Alwyn,Arnold,Bax,Bridge,Corp,Rubbra,Ireland, Moeran,Walton,Vaughan Williams,Elgar,Lennox Berkeley,Britten,Rawsthorne(phew).
Endellion Quartet,Britten complete String Quartets.
RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet,Stanford String Quartets 1 & 2.
Divertimenti,Howells String Quartet no 3,Dyson Three Rhapsodies.
Delius,complete Violin Sonatas,Tasmin Little and Piers Lane.
This
Howells,Violin Sonatas,Paul Barritt,Catherine Edwards.
Elgar,Vaughan Williams,Walton,Violin Sonatas,Menuhin.

Blimey,this will take days..............leave it there for now................not even started on trios and quintets.......probably get round to song around mid July

[Nick Armstrong]

As far as chamber music is concerned, this would be my most-played recording I think (mentioned on another thread not long ago):



As regards British song, what springs to mind (as well as all the Britten cycles, the Finzi cycles etc etc) is Butterworth's wonderful 'Shropshire Lad' cycle - I recall now that some years ago I did a mini-BAL-at-home exercise of this work with a singer friend, and we came to the conclusion that this was head-and-shoulders above the others:



A lovely collection it is too - here's the contents:

[EdgeleyRob]

Ah yes Cal,those too.

Here's a British song desert island disc of mine.

[Nick Armstrong]

Ah yes Cal,those too.

Here's a British song desert island disc of mine.

Very much a companion disc to the one I mentioned. I just have a real soft spot for the Butterworth

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There's some tremendous Consort Music by Byrd (with and without voice) and his contemporaries;
Purcell's Fantasias and other Chamber works (including a Chaconne that lets you hear what a real composer would've made of Pachelbel's "Canon");
Rebecca Clarke's Piano Trio;
Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH
the String Quartets of Britten, Tippett, Maxwell Davies, Ferneyhough and James Dillon;

Ferneyhough's String Trio, Funerailles, Lemma, Icon, Epigram, Time & Motion Studies1 & 3, Unity Capsule, Cassandra's Dream Song, Etudes Transcandantales Bone Alphabet; Triptych for GS; Kurze Schatten; no time at all;

Hinton's String Quintet;
Birtwistle's Clarinet Quintet, the Refrains & Choruses and Five Distances both for Wind Quintet;
Barrett's coïgitum, ne songe plus a fuir and Traces;
Rebecca Saunders' Quartet, Blue & Grey and choler;

Too many pieces, too many performers - but pride of place to the Arditti Quartet, Ian Pace and the Musicians in ELISION, Music Projects London, musikFabrik and others who "took on" Music that was considered absurdly unplayable and showed that not only could it be played, but that this was such Music that should be.
Finnissy's English Country Tunes,

[BBMmk2]

Not foregetting thye 'Early Music' of british Chamber Music, ?Ferney. Veritas has some great recordings by Byrd and Dowland, played by Fretwork.

I was hoping really, for a genreral discussion on this thread as well.

Cali, those recordings, you mentioned, I have the Howells, but not the others. Hmmmm.........

[Suffolkcoastal]

I would add the Chandos double of the Moeran songs. I used to play through his James Joyce songs and try and sing along for many years until I heard them performed for the 1st time on radio about 15 years ago, when the Moeran songs discs came out they were eagerly snapped up.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not foregetting thye 'Early Music' of british Chamber Music, ?Ferney. Veritas has some great recordings by Byrd and Dowland, played by Fretwork.

Indeed - as has NAXOS with Red Bird (and the lovely Tessa Bonner: the nearest she got to a solo recital disc, IIRC )
London Baroque has an excellent CD of Purcell's (non-Fantasia) Chamber Music on Harmonia Mundi's budget "Musique d'Abord" label which is one of my most-played discs.


It's a great time to be alive to experience all this glorious Music so easily available on disc from performers utterly committed to it: I entirely second the praise for the Magginis that Edgeley voices in #3 - adding their recordings of the Maxwell Davies Naxos Quartets, which really repay the repeated listenings that the works wouldn't otherwise receive. Now; if only they could would record the Hinton Quintet for NAXOS!

[Richard Tarleton]

An outstanding recording, which pays tribute on the cover to Julian Bream -

The emergence of British guitar music during the second half of the twentieth century is due almost entirely to the great guitarist Julian Bream...

The one work it doesn't include is the greatest piece from the repertoire, Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland, of which there are definitive recordings by Bream coupled with works by other, non-British composers .

[BBMmk2]

As far as chamber music is concerned, this would be my most-played recording I think (mentioned on another thread not long ago):



As regards British song, what springs to mind (as well as all the Britten cycles, the Finzi cycles etc etc) is Butterworth's wonderful 'Shropshire Lad' cycle - I recall now that some years ago I did a mini-BAL-at-home exercise of this work with a singer friend, and we came to the conclusion that this was head-and-shoulders above the others:



A lovely collection it is too - here's the contents:

I am very surprised to find that I do not have that Butterworth and Geurney Chandos recordimg, Cali!!

[Pabmusic]

...As regards British song, what springs to mind (as well as all the Britten cycles, the Finzi cycles etc etc) is Butterworth's wonderful 'Shropshire Lad' cycle...

Strictly speaking, the songs were never meant to be a cycle. Butterworth certainly meant them to be performed together (that is, all eleven songs) but accepted Augener's decision to issue them as two sets, 'Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad' and 'Bredon Hill and other songs'.

He was never sure about the order either. The manuscript in the library of Eton College contains ten songs (On the Idle Hill of Summer wasn't yet written) in the order:

O fair enough are sky and plain
Think no more, lad
Is my team ploughing?
When the lad for longing sighs
Loveliest of trees
When I was one-and-twenty
The lads in their hundreds
With rue my heart is laden
Look not in my eyes
Bredon Hill

The first performance, on May 11th 1911, was of nine songs in this order:

O fair enough are sky and plain
Look not in my eyes
When I was one-and-twenty
When the lad for longing sighs
Think no more, lad
Loveliest of trees
Is my team ploughing?
With rue my heart is laden
Bredon Hill

The singer was J Campbell McInnes, with the composer at the piano, in a concert of the Oxford University Music Club (of which Butterworth had been President) organised by Butterworth's successor as President, Adrian Boult. Boult himself sang the second performance at a private function, again with GB accompanying - but only gave eight of the songs. For the first performance, the piano ending of Think no more lad was incomplete and GB presumably improvised. Also, the piano ending to Bredon Hill was a little longer than we know now.

Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad was published first and performed by J Campbell McInnes and Hamilton Harty at the Aeolian Hall. By the time the second set was published in 1913, GB had written On the idle hill of summer.

[aeolium]

For anyone who is interested and able to attend, there is a one-day Gurney festival at Gloucester Cathedral on 31 August:

http://www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk/index.php?mact=Calendar,cntnt01,default,0&cntnt01year=2013&cntnt01month=8&cntnt01day=31&cntnt01event_id=2401&cntnt01display=event&cntnt01lang=en_GB&cntnt01detailpage=&cntnt01return_id=137&cntnt01orig=today&cntnt01returnid=137

[Stanfordian]

Ah yes Cal,those too.

Here's a British song desert island disc of mine.

I often say that Luxon was in his prime for this recording.