Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius, Elgar - Music for Strings | Chandos CHSA5291

Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius, Elgar - Music for Strings

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHSA5291

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 3rd February 2023

Contents

About

This keenly anticipated album from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson features two of the greatest British works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. Elgar’s groundbreaking work, commissioned for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra and premièred in 1905, is inspired by the baroque concerto grosso, and features a solo string quartet contrasted with the full symphonic string section. These orchestral forces were also adopted by Herbert Howells in his Concerto for String Orchestra, from 1938. Delius’s Late Swallows is the only piece not originally composed for string orchestra; it was arranged (from the slow movement of Delius’s String Quartet) by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby.

Recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD.

Reviews

The pre-eminent point of comparison for many listeners will be Barbirolli’s 1963 album of ‘English String Music’ (Warner, 5/63), and the players of the modern Sinfonia of London yield nothing to their predecessors in the bite and impassioned surge of their address to Elgar’s Introduction. ... I expect it has been said before, but the Sinfonia of London belongs in the Formula 1 class of orchestras, and in this repertoire sits in pole position.  Peter Quantrill
Gramophone March 2023
Gramophone Editor's Choice

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