John Foulds - Dynamic Triptych; Music-Pictures III (Sakari Oramo)

Information

Composer: John Foulds

• (01-03) Dynamic Triptych for piano and orchestra, Op. 88
• (04)      April-England (Impressions of Time and Place No. 1), Op. 48 No. 1
• (05-08) Music-Pictures Group III, Op. 33
• (09)      The Song of Ram Dass
• (10)      Keltic Lament, Op. 29 No. 2 (Keltic Suite)

Peter Donohoe, piano (01-03)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Date: 2006
Label: Warner Classics

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Review

Brilliant music Stokowski would have loved and Oramo does proud

Composers generally fall into one of two camps: either they write because they choose to, or because they have to. It seems to me that Manchester-born John Foulds, a one-time cellist with the Hallé, was one of those who had to, and he was also something of a musical prophet. Extraordinary how his Dynamic Triptych opens, like an unstoppable current swirling around its seven-note mode, a tightly-woven study that goes to show how, given the right composer, confined harmony can work miracles. The slow second movement is cold but gripping, with strings that slide every now and then on a queasy bed of quarter-tones, the use of piano and timps fitfully anticipating Bartók’s Second Concerto. The finale anticipates Martinu in the way that rhythmic patterns meet or converge, occasionally even Prokofiev (ie, momentarily, the Eighth Sonata, from around 2’19”) with some brilliant running passagework from Peter Donohoe, who gives a superb performance.

April – England is an earlier piece that was later revised, spontaneous and wide-eyed à la Copland to start with then quietening for a noble, slower section in the manner of a passacaglia. The Music-Pictures Group III is earlier still (1912), the first of them prophesying the Sibelius of Tapiola with a huge climax, the mostly playful ‘Columbine’ featuring yet more destabilising quarter-tones. The ‘Old Greek Legend’ has something of an Elgarian tread about it and the lively ‘Tocsin’ finale ends just like the ‘March to the Scaffold’ from the Symphonie fantastique. In fact Berlioz is probably Foulds’s nearest forebear; both men relished new sounds while holding fast to key aspects of tradition, and Foulds, like Berlioz, was a pretty stunning orchestrator.

I kept wondering what the sensual The Song of Ram Dass reminded me of, then suddenly it hit me: ‘The Troubadour’s Serenade’ from Glazunov’s Middle Ages Suite – parallel exoticism, and a similarly winsome melody line. As for the gorgeous ‘Keltic Lament’ (James Horner eat your heart out), fine as Sakari Oramo’s performance is – fine as his whole disc is in fact – one name kept coming back to me: Leopold Stokowski. How he would have basked in this amazing music! But, not having Mickey’s magic wand to hand, Oramo and his Birmingham players will do very nicely. This is a really first-rate programme, a worthy follow-up to Oramo’s first Foulds CD (A/04) and a revealing window onto an unusual and innovative area of English music. Malcolm MacDonald’s annotations are both appetising and informed.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH (by Rob Barnett)
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH (by John France)
http://www.classical-music.com/review/foulds-2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/gd4h/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/apr/23/33
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamic-Triptych-Concerto-Peter-Donohoe/dp/B000EQHV52
https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Triptych-Concerto-Peter-Donohoe/dp/B000EQHV52

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John Foulds (2 November 1880 – 25 April 1939) was an English composer of classical music. Foulds was an adventurous figure of great innate musicality and superb technical skill. He was largely self-taught as a composer, and belongs to the figures of the English Musical Renaissance. A successful composer of light music and theatre scores, his principal creative energies went into more ambitious and exploratory works that were particularly influenced by Indian music. Foulds' most substantial compositions include string quartets, symphonic poems, concertos, piano pieces, as well as a series of "Music-Pictures".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foulds

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Sakari Oramo (born October 26, 1965 in Helsinki) is a Finnish conductor. He started his career as a violinist and concertmaster of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO), and studied conducting with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy. From 1998 to 2008, Oramo was Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with which he championed the music of John Foulds in concerts and recordings. He was Principal Conductor of the FRSO (2003-2012), and is currently Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (since 2008) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (since 2013).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakari_Oramo

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