British Music

[kolaboy]

Just wanted to add my thanks for the Holst, and for the Josephs. The first music of Josephs I ever heard was his theme music for the programme "The Voyage of Charles Darwin". Years later and his symphonies (especially the 5th) are now among my favorites...

[Dundonnell]

I would like to give advance notice that I shall be uploading three works by Anthony Milner later today.

Milner has almost completely disappeared from current British musical consciousness. This is, in my opinion, an immense pity. Milner was a very fine composer, particularly of religious choral music(he was a devout Roman Catholic). His music is tonal, albeit at the outer edges of tonality. It is not necessarily 'easy music', any more than is that of composers like Fricker or, the better known, Michael Tippett but it is worth patient study.

http://www.chesternovello.com/default.aspx?TabId=2431&State_2905=2&ComposerId_2905=1057

Milner's First Symphony and Variations for orchestra appeared in the mid 1980s on a Hyperion LP and reappeared on a Claudio cd:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/Oct01/Milner.htm

Both the Chester Novello site and the Musicweb review mention Milner's Symphony No.2, a large-scale choral symphony composed for and premiered at the 1978 Liverpool Festival of Sacred Music. This sincere and impressive work disappeared thereafter but my taped recording of that performance is one of the uploads going up for members here. I shall also be uploading the huge Oratorio "The Water and the Fire" of 1961 in a performance conducted by Meredith Davies.

[albion]

The following have just been added -

Arwel Hughes (1909-1988): Symphony

Alun Hoddinott (1929-2008): Concerto Grosso No.1; Folk Song Suite; The Hawk is Set Free

Many thanks to Dundonnell for continuing to increase Cambrian representation in the archive.

[oldman]

FYI.

I just tried several of the URL's at the top of the first page and was presented with a blurb for mediafire instead of a download list.

The URL's in question are C, E, G, ST-SU, T, WA-WH

[Mark Thomas]

Albion: the browser briefly flashes "No files to display" and then reverts to my own account at MediaFire.

[albion]

I'm on the case!

[Dundonnell]

It's ok for me

[albion]

All should be OK now!



As with much of the internet, sometimes things do go temporarily t**s up, and sometimes they right themselves without intervention, sometimes not. In this case I've simply created new folders, transferred files over and generated new URLs.

Thanks for the alert - please could members accessing (or trying to access) BMB let me know of any problems as they arise.

[eschiss1]

Rather than update the info in my BMB entry for Simpson 4 conducted by Nicholas Kok-
will put this here- it's clear from the first file (in which something from 1979 is described by an introducing speaker for the BBC as exactly 30 years ago) that this is the rebroadcast from 2009, not as I wrote the original broadcast of the performance (which I think was, without the talk, first broadcast before the British Composer Week in 2009- which 20-minute track I misdescribe as being a talk by Simpson, rather like the concluding track of the Hyperion 9th symphony recording (briefer) is ; not so... includes portions by Simpson but is mostly by other people - family members, friends, musicologists who knew him less well, etc., plus, in both cases, music excerpts by Simpson and other composers (more of them in this talk) - I need to listen more carefully and relisten before labeling things. Good track to hear occasionally - though yes, I prefer the symphony by a wide margin, and find the performance conducted by Kok quite good. Glad to have that and the Handley, and sorry about the mistakes.)

[albion]

Many thanks to Dundonnell for some more fascinating broadcasts - the first representation of a composer that I've been particularly interested to hear -

Anthony Milner (1925-2002): The Water and the Fire; Midway; Symphony No.2

I've provided further performance details in the annotated BMB list, and Colin has provided some useful links in his post above.

[Dundonnell]

Having listened to these works again as I digitised them I was particularly impressed by the 1961 Oratorio "The Water and the Fire" which is a splendid example of a Three Choirs commissioned choral composition of very large scale

[Dundonnell]

After a fortnight of steady conversion of reel-to-reel tapes to mp3 and uploading of the files I reckon that i am probably about half way through my collection of British music which is not currently available on cd. There is, of course, a great deal more which is on cd but in alternative versions

Just as a summary I have to date uploaded and Albion has kindly added to the British Music section the following symphonies, concertos and major choral compositions:

Sir Lennox Berkeley:
Magnificat, op. 71

Havergal Brian:
Symphony No.3 (Pope)                                                               Violin Concerto (Holmes)
Symphony No.20 (Handley)                                                       Opera "Agamemnon"

Alan Bush:
Symphony No.3 "The Byron Symphony"

Arthur Butterworth:
Organ Concerto

Francis Chagrin:
Symphony No.1

Arnold Cooke:
Symphony No.4                                                                              Violin Concerto
Symphony No.5                                                                              Oboe Concerto

Peter Racine Fricker:
Symphony No.4                                                                               Piano Concerto
Symphony No.5                                                                               Viola Concerto

Alun Hoddinott:
Piano Concerto No.3                                                                      Organ Concerto

Arwel Hughes:
Symphony

Daniel Jones:
Symphony No.3                                                                             Violin Concerto
Symphony No.10


Wilfred Josephs:
Symphony No.1                                                                             Symphony No.5 "Pastoral"
Symphony No.3 "Philadelphia"                                                  Symphony No.7 "Winter"

Kenneth Leighton:
Piano Concerto No.2                                                                     Concerto for Viola and Harp

George Lloyd:
Symphony No.6

John McCabe:
Violin Concerto No.2

Anthony Milner:
Symphony No.2                                                                            Oratorio "The Water and the Fire"

David Morgan:
Sinfonia da Requiem

Alan Rawsthorne:
Carmen Vitale

Thomas Wilson:
Symphony No.2

[eschiss1]

btw, the Dufay variations by Cooke I'm guessing would be no earlier performed than the Proms world premiere  (also Groves-conducted) 25 July 1969 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/search/performance_find.shtml?composer_id=29538&all=1&tab=search&sub_tab=composer) and could conceivably be the same performance or near to, I suppose. (From the same link, the cello concerto was given its public premiere in 1975 with Igloi/Groves but that's been mentioned already I notice...)

[albion]

Just as a summary I have to date uploaded [...] the following symphonies, concertos and major choral compositions ...

Thanks, Colin - this summary list is extremely useful: with a large quantity of material being added in a relatively short time-frame, it's easy to lose track and forget about or even be totally unaware of what's actually there!

[Dundonnell]

Just as a summary I have to date uploaded [...] the following symphonies, concertos and major choral compositions ...

Thanks, Colin - this summary list is extremely useful: with a large quantity of material being added in a relatively short time-frame, it's easy to lose track and forget about or even be totally unaware of what's actually there!

That was the motivation/purpose