Barnaby Robson

Barnaby Robson, Fiona Harris, Simon Chamberlain, Rebecca Chambers – 1 2 3 11 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:07:48 minutes | 631 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Orchid Classics

Clarinettist Barnaby Robson performs a rich program of 20th-century and contemporary music for clarinet and piano, including world-premiere recordings. The release opens with Barnaby Robson’s collaboration with BAFTA-winning sound designer Martin Cantwell: a recording of Steve Reich’s intricate New York Counterpoint, which involves eight pre-recorded clarinet lines (the forces of which are referenced in the album’s title.) Herbert Howells is celebrated for his choral music but his instrumental works are less famous; with pianist Fiona Harris, Robson performs the 1946 version of Howells’s Clarinet Sonata, never recorded before. Three further world-premiere recordings follow: Robson’s arrangement for clarinet, viola and piano of George Fenton’s Snow Leopard – music originally composed for the BBC’s “Planet Earth” – for which Robson is joined by Simon Chamberlain and Rebecca Chambers; Graham Fitkin’s mercurial Cusp for solo clarinet; and the witty Red Herring Blues for clarinet and piano by baritone-composer Roderick Williams. The recording is rounded off with two 20th-century French works: Poulenc’s Sonata for Two Clarinets (Robson has recorded both parts) and Debussy’s dazzling Première Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano.
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