Next week BBC Radio 3 are broadcasting premiere recordings of music by Stanford and Parry.
On Monday 17 January at 14:00 Stanford's Overture in the Style of a Tragedy and the Three Idylls for female chorus and chamber orchestra A Fairy Day will be broadcast. The Ulster Orchestra are conducted by Kenneth Montgomery for the Overture and by Howard Shelley for the Idylls, with the Ulster Youth Choir.
The next day, Tuesday 18 January, at 15:55 Shelley and the Ulster Orchestra and Youth Choir will perform Parry's ballet Proserpine. Before then, at 14:50, Shelley will conduct the Ulster Orchestra in Alice Mary Smith's Symphony in A minor, which he conducted for Chandos a few years ago (but with the London Mozart players).
Time to set your recording equipment up, Albion!
Great news - thanks Mark! I stopped buying the Radio Times long ago so it's great to have advanced warning like this. I'll be hooking up the DAB to the CD recorder (how technology has moved on) this time! ;D
It must be years since I looked forward to recording anything off-air: hooray for Radio 3 - I won't hear a word said against it! ;)
In case any interested parties are unable to tune in next week for whatever reason, assuming that the off-air recording goes well, I'll put the following pieces into a British Music Broadcasts folder:
Stanford: Overture in the Style of a Tragedy; Stanford: A Fairy Day; Alice Mary Smith: Symphony in A minor; Parry: Proserpine; Dorothy Howell: Lamia
Albion, you are a treasure!
Thanks, Albion. Some of us in the Colonies do indeed, have a difficult time tuning into BBC3. Where would one find the British Music Folder?
Jerry
It's here (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,856.0.html). As for tuning in to BBC Radio 3, you could try listening live over the internet. The bit rate is only 128 kbps, but it's no worse than many mp3s and you can easily record it. I do that for many non-British radio stations.
Quote from: Mark Thomas on Wednesday 12 January 2011, 08:36
you are a treasure!
Merely an ambassador for something that this country is actually good at (and there aren't many things that fall into that category ::)) - namely producing fascinating composers and wonderful music! ;D
Now that first part is not true and unduly deprecatory... but off-topic...
Quote from: Albion on Wednesday 12 January 2011, 16:48
Merely an ambassador for something that this country is actually good at (and there aren't many things that fall into that category ::)) - namely producing fascinating composers and wonderful music! ;D
Quote from: eschiss1 on Wednesday 12 January 2011, 17:43
Now that first part is not true and unduly deprecatory... but off-topic...
Just remember these words on 27th July 2012 when Boris comperes a 'Best of British' opening ceremony featuring a knobbly-knees competition (courtesy of the 'stars' from
Britain's Got Talent) and introducing the new Olympic sport of Relay-Pub-Crawl, the transport infrastructure dies on it's knees and the music of the unsungs is drowned out by the soothing strains of the vuvuzela. :P
Back to the topic - these performances are perhaps hopeful signs that somebody at the BBC is actually taking an informed interest in more adventurous repertoire again, as the pieces by Stanford (Overture in the Style of a Tragedy, Op.90) and Parry (Proserpine) are unpublished. Neither the Overture nor Fairy Day, Op.131 has ever been performed as far as anybody is aware. The BBC must have actually gone to the trouble of having parts copied especially for these broadcasts! :o
Let's hope that this unwonted flame of enterprise within Radio 3 is not extinguished as quickly as it flared up.
More likely somebody has sponsored the performances in some way. I've seen no other signs of Auntie suffering a Pauline conversion.
Quote from: Mark Thomas on Thursday 13 January 2011, 08:13
More likely somebody has sponsored the performances in some way. I've seen no other signs of Auntie suffering a Pauline conversion.
Your probably right, Mark! Another thought -
sometimes, broadcasts like this have been known to presage commercial recordings. The Ulster Orchestra, as far as I'm aware, has largely dropped out of the recording circuit (remembering the heady Chandos days of the late 1980s and early 1990s).
Don't forget to make use of the HD Sound stream if you can get it - 320 kps, as distinct from the old 120 or thereabouts!
The R3 reception here is awful,so this will be a great help Albion. I may try popping in ye olde cassette though!
I wonder whats come over the Beeb? What with a Rufinatscha Overture,what can we expect next?
Time to write or email them about HB's 'The Tiger's'......again!
In a quite extraordinary week of broadcasts by the Ulster Orchestra, the premiere performance of the 1935 Violin Concerto by Irish composer Ina Boyle (1889-1967) is to be broadcast next Friday afternoon at 3.00 (you can listen to her The Magic Harp, 1920, in Folder 6). Needless to say, the concerto will be recorded and added to the archive! ;D
There is an appreciation of Boyle's career written by Elizabeth Maconchy here: http://www.michaeljamiesonbristow.com/ina-boyle-1889-1967 (http://www.michaeljamiesonbristow.com/ina-boyle-1889-1967)
You can also listen to a documentary feature from RTE about her here: http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/features/1362580.html (http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/features/1362580.html)
Quote from: Albion on Thursday 13 January 2011, 07:31
Neither the Overture nor Fairy Day, Op.131 has ever been performed as far as anybody is aware.
According the Jeremy Dibble,
Fairy Day, written for Victor Harris and the St Cecilia Society of New York,
was premiered by it's dedicatees in 1913 and later performed by Horatio Parker in Philadelphia. Paul Rodmell, however, is of the opinion that the work was "apparently unperformed by [the St Cecilia Society]".
Quote from: Mark Thomas on Thursday 13 January 2011, 08:13
More likely somebody has sponsored the performances in some way. I've seen no other signs of Auntie suffering a Pauline conversion.
The broadcasts are taken from performances during last year's BBC Invitation Concerts at the Ulster Hall: I've found all the relevant dates and will put these into the file information when they're uploaded, together with the text of
Fairy Day.
A pianist who I know once told me that he named his son Stanford because he wanted to ensure that he wouldn't be a musician. Stanford ***** is now an adult and is not a musician.
Sorry.
I'll get my coat.
As you were...
Most naughty of you, Alistair! But fine by me for I'm liberal enough to smile at opinions different from my own (apart from my intolerance of enthusiastic views of a recent musical composition involving four string quartets and a bowl). I sometimes seriously upset people through outrageous (but sincere) comments on Mozart - and your view of Stanford isn't perhaps as upsetting to others as mine!
But, please, hang the coat back on its peg and stay with us. I always especially enjoy your sharp and often very witty observations. Besides, you have something to do with a certain Altarus CD identifiable by the number CD9066(3) - and that is a treasured CD on my shelves.
Peter
Both of today's very significant Stanford broadcasts are now to found in Folder 6 of BMB.
Fairy Day, beautifully performed by the Ulster forces, has perhaps the most immediate appeal, but the Overture in the Style of a Tragedy repays repeated listening and emerges as an unexpectedly substantial composition from Stanford's maturity.
Thanks for uploading all of this wonderful music. Please continue to do so.
Jerry
Quote from: jerfilm on Tuesday 18 January 2011, 02:30
Thanks for uploading all of this wonderful music. Please continue to do so.
Smith, Parry and Howell today! ;D
There's a wonderful moment in
Fairy Dawn when it seems as though Stanford's fairies have just spotted something shiny from the banks of the Rhine. ;)
The Stanford works are wonderfully worthwhile works: the Overture a powerfully dramatic piece, the choral one an utter enchantment. Thanks so much for the uploads.
I was hugely impressed by the Symphony in A minor (1876) by Alice Mary Smith which was broadcast this week - vigorous, tuneful and elegantly scored. Besides this and the earlier C minor Symphony (1863) recorded by Chandos I think that she might have produced another Symphony in G major (mentioned in several on-line references).
Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of Ian Graham Jones' biography (http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=8209&pc=9 (http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=8209&pc=9)) - does anybody know if a G major Symphony is still extant and where the manuscript might be?
Quote from: Albion on Wednesday 19 January 2011, 21:50
I was hugely impressed by the Symphony in A minor (1876) by Alice Mary Smith which was broadcast this week - vigorous, tuneful and elegantly scored. Besides this and the earlier C minor Symphony (1863) recorded by Chandos I think that she might have produced another Symphony in G major (mentioned in several on-line references).
According to RAM library OPAC Smith seems to have produced quite a few other things including either 3 or 32 string quartets and several other chamber works, possibly some of them lost but some newly republished, some just in manuscript, and I'm sure there's much there by her and others awaiting revival of course.