John Wilson

Sinfonia of London & John Wilson – Bacewicz, Enescu, Ysaÿe: Music for Strings (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:39 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

For this their fourth album of music for string orchestra, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London present a programme of works by three composers from the Franco-Belgian school of string pedagogy, who were all themselves virtuosic string players. George Enescu studied in Paris and Vienna, spent much of his life in France, and was internationally lauded as a concert violinist and conductor in both Europe and America. Much of his music remained unknown after his death – a situation improved thanks to some high-profile champions of his work, not least his most famous pupil Yehudi Menuhin. When Enescu supplied a preface for a new edition of his Octet, in 1950, he sanctioned its performance by a full string orchestra, the form in which we hear it on this recording. Completed in 1924, Ysaÿe’s Harmonies du soir is scored for string quartet and string orchestra, enabling Ysaÿe to exploit the contrast between intimate and full string sound, a technique inspired by Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Affectionately known as the ‘First Lady of Polish Music’, Grazyna Bacewicz was an outstanding virtuoso violinist, a formidable pianist, and ground-breaking composer. A great deal of her output was written for strings, including the Concerto for String Orchestra, written in 1948. Often described as neoclassical, the work takes some inspiration from the baroque concerto grosso, but is distinctly modern in its harmonic language and was particularly admired by Lutoslawski.

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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Ravel, Berkeley, Pounds: Orchestral Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:50 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

The three composers whose works appear on this album are interconnected: Ravel was a mentor to Lennox Berkeley, and Berkeley to Pounds. Le Tombeau de Couperin marks Ravel’s movement towards neoclassicism, its forms and style a re-invention of ones from the French baroque. Originally written for solo piano, the movements of the suite were dedicated to friends whom Ravel had lost in the First World War. In 1919 he orchestrated four of the six movements (the version performed here). Berkeley met Ravel a number of times in the 1920s, working as an interpreter and tour-guide whilst Ravel was in London. Ravel advised him to study with Nadia Boulanger, which he did, between 1926 and 1932. Commissioned by Sir Arthur Bliss for the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1942, the Divertimento initially received a mixed reception, but has since found many supporters (including Pounds). The critic Peter Dickinson felt it showed an ‘instinctive and unimpassioned creativeness associated with the French aesthetic, but by no means restricted to it’. Adam Pounds studied privately with Berkeley in London during the late 1970s, and in his own music has perpetuated the firm commitment of the two earlier composers to clarity and accessibility in everything they wrote. His Third Symphony was written in 2021 and is a response to the national lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pounds states that the piece captures the ‘sadness, humour, determination and defiance’ which everyone faced at this time – not least musicians. Scored for relatively modest orchestral forces, the work is dedicated to Sinfonia of London and John Wilson who here give the work its world premiere recording.

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Sinfonia of London & John Wilson – Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (Complete original score) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:39:43 minutes | 1,84 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was first performed in 1943, and was a significant turning point in the history of musical theatre. It was the first musical to put drama and plot to the fore, portrayed by rounded, believable characters. It swept aside traditions that had their roots in vaudeville – star turns, comic sketches, and endless lines of high-kicking chorus girls. Oklahoma! does feature dance, but in the hands of the choreographer, Agnes de Mille, this was idiomatic to the plot, and revolutionary in terms of the fifteen-minute dream-sequence ballet at the close of Act I. The first collaboration between composer and writer, the show was a hit, running for more than five years on Broadway, and paving the way for their masterpieces to come.

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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Respighi: Roman Trilogy (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:06 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Following the widespread critical acclaim of their first two recordings including a BBC Music Magazine Award John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London turn to Respighis Roman Trilogy for their third release. Born in Bologna in 1879, Respighi trained as a violinist and composer, and travelled extensively. His influences are therefore wide-ranging, from Richard Strauss and Debussy to Rimsky-Korsakov (who taught him orchestration) in addition to a love of and fascination with Plainsong and music of the Italian baroque. Fountains of Rome was the first of these three great tone poems, composed between 1913 and 1916, and inspired by a series of photographs given to him by the artist Edita Broglio.
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Sinfonia Of London, John Wilson – English Music for Strings (Britten – Bliss – Bridge – Berkeley) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:46 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

During the 1930s, Bliss, Britten, and Berkeley all contributed major works to the repertoire for string orchestra, following in the footsteps of Elgar and Vaughan Williams. They are joined on this album by Frank Bridge whose Lament was composed during the First World War. Bliss composed Music for Strings after he had completed the film score for Korda’s Things to Come, driven by his desire to compose a piece of ‘pure music’, expressing his own ideas rather than those of others.
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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Dutilleux: Le Loup & Other Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:22 minutes | 942 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Following the success of their previous album, “English Music for Strings”, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London turn their attention to the music of Henri Dutilleux. His ballet Le Loup was composed as a commission for Roland Petit’s dance company and premièred in Paris in March 1953. Rarely recorded – this is the first recording by a non-French orchestra – the work unfolds in three tableaux and tells a convoluted tale of a bridegroom who jilts his bride (to run away with a gypsy) by persuading her that he has been changed into a wolf. Over time she discovers that the wolf is real, but her feelings turn from terror to love and when the alarmed villagers hunt the wolf, she defends him and dies at his side.
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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Korngold: Works for Orchestra (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:17 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London shine in an all-Korngold programme full of wit, romanticism, sensitivity, and virtuosity – an orchestral tour de force! Conductor John Wilson has earned a reputation for his interpretations of British and American repertoire in particular. He is a favourite of many of the UK’s orchestras and festivals including the BBC Proms and Aldeburgh Festival and is currently Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. John is also in demand across the world at the very highest level, conducting the major orchestras of Sydney, Berlin, Budapest, Amsterdam, Oslo amongst many others, and has a large and growing discography, covering a wide range of repertoire.
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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Escales: French Orchestral Works (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:07 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

John Wilson and Sinfonia of London release their second album, following widespread and universal critical acclaim for their first recording, of Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp. This new recording explores the unique sound world of French orchestral music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The programme juxtaposes well-known favourites, such as Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs, with pieces far more rarely heard, for example Duruflé’s Trois Danses and Saint-Saëns’s Le Rouet d’Omphale.
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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Ravel: Orchestral Works (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:45 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Following their second BBC Music Magazine Award (for Respighi’s Roman Trilogy) and universal praise for their first concert (at the BBC Proms in 2021), Sinfonia of London and John Wilson turn to the orchestral works of Ravel for this their sixth studio album. Not only an outstanding pianist and one of France’s greatest composers, Maurice Ravel is acclaimed as one of the greatest orchestrators of all time. His unique ability to conjure the widest possible range of colours and textures from the orchestral palette is amply demonstrated on this album. The programme opens with La Valse, conceived as a snapshot of 1850s Vienna. The continuous sequence of waltzes becomes increasingly insistent until the sound is almost utterly overwhelming. Other ballets also feature – Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) and the notorious Boléro, both recorded here for the first time in their complete original versions. Ravel’s orchestrations of his own piano works complete the programme: Valses nobles et sentimentales, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Alborada del gracioso, which demonstrates both Ravel’s fascination with Spanish sounds and culture and the sheer virtuosity of orchestral playing of Sinfonia of London.
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Sinfonia of London, John Wilson – Metamorphosen – R.Strauss; Korngold; Schrecker (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:22 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Following their critically acclaimed album of English Music for Strings, Sinfonia of London and John Wilson turn to Germany and three outstanding works for string orchestra. Franz Schreker’s Intermezzo, the oldest piece here, was composed in 1900, before Schreker’s rise to fame in the opera houses of Germany and Austria, but shows strong indications of what was to follow. Korngold composed the Symphonische Serenade following his return to Vienna from Hollywood after the Second World War, and shortly before he wrote his Symphony in F sharp. Korngold effortlessly conjures a vivid range of colours and textures from his large forces (32 violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, and 8 basses) in a work that explores the virtuosity of the players to the full. Composed in 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of the war, and the desecration of German culture, Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings seems to look backwards to the German romantic tradition (a trait even more evident in his Four Last Songs, of 1948). The moving final passage, marked ‘In Memoriam’, leaves the listener to contemplate in silence.
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