Michael Collins, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Arnold: Clarinet concerto and Orchestral works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Michael Collins, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba - Arnold: Clarinet concerto and Orchestral works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Michael Collins, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Arnold: Clarinet concerto and Orchestral works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:50 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Rumon Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic in this collection of lesser-known pieces by the British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold. Born in 1921, he was inspired by Louis Armstrong to take up the trumpet at the age of twelve. Following study at the Royal College of Music, in London, he became Principal Trumpet of the London Philharmonic, in 1943 – a post he held (bar one season at the BBC Symphony Orchestra) until he moved to composing full time, in 1948. Arnold was active in many genres, writing nine symphonies, two operas, five ballets, and more than 100 film scores, including The Bridge on the River Kwai for which he won an Oscar. This album features music from across his compositional career, from Larch Trees (1943) to the Philharmonic Concerto (1976) – both works written for the London Philharmonic. His Divertimento was written for the newly formed National Youth Orchestra, whilst the BBC commissioned the Commonwealth Christmas Overture for the twenty-fifth anniversary of King George VI’s first Christmas Broadcast, in 1932. The Clarinet Concerto No. 1, expertly performed here by Michael Collins, was written for Frederick (‘Jack’) Thurston who gave the premiere, in 1949, at the Edinburgh Festival. The album concludes with Philip Lane’s o rchestration of The Padstow Lifeboat, originally composed for brass band to celebrate the launch of a new lifeboat in Padstow in 1968.
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Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba - Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:57 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) was born in the English seaside resort of Bexhill-on-Sea. Encouraged as a child by an ambitious pianist mother, she appeared locally as a prodigy pianist. She was accepted by the Royal College of Music in 1937, at the age of sixteen, having won the Caird Scholarship. She quickly matured, both as composer and pianist. She studied with Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob, and later the oboe with Leon Goossens. During the Second World War she gained a position as oboist with the City of Birmingham Orchestra and devoted a great deal of her time to composing.
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Oulu Sinfonia & Rumon Gamba – Overtures from Finland (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Oulu Sinfonia & Rumon Gamba – Overtures from Finland (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:32 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

From the middle of the nineteenth century there was a blossoming of nationalism within the creative arts – very notably in music – in Finland that reflected the political mood in the country. From an international perspective, the dominant stature of Sibelius can often overshadow the wide-ranging works of his peers – something that this album goes some way to redressing. Robert Kajanus was the leading figure in Finnish music before Sibelius became established. His Overtura sinfonica is a late work, from 1926, which epitomises his style. Armas Järnefelt was a friend and fellow student of Sibelius, and eventually became his brother-in-law. Erkki Melartin wrote his incidental music for Prinsessa Ruusunen (Sleeping Beauty) for a production of Zachris Topelius’s fairy-tale play at the Finnish Theatre. Ernst Mielck (who cruelly died aged twenty-one) was mentored by Robert Kajanus, who also conducted the première of Mielck’s Dramatische Ouvertüre in Helsinki. Selim Palmgren was an acclaimed pianist and composer, and was eventually appointed Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. The overture from his Tuhkimo-Sarja (Cinderella Suite) is particularly exotic. Another pianist-composer, Heino Kaski, spent his career as a teacher, leaving little time for composition. His Prélude is an orchestration of one of his most popular piano miniatures. The work of Uuno Klami is closer to European modernism, reflecting his studies in Paris and Vienna. Leevi Madetoja was perhaps the most talented of Sibelius’s small number of private pupils. His Comedy Overture is an orchestral tour-de-force, with echoes of Richard Strauss. He was a native of Oulu, the home of the Oulu Sinfonia, conducted here by its chief conductor, Rumon Gamba.

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Rumon Gamba, Iceland Symphony Orchestra – Wirén: Symphony No. 3, Serenade for Strings, Sinfonetta & Divertimento (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Rumon Gamba, Iceland Symphony Orchestra – Wirén: Symphony No. 3, Serenade for Strings, Sinfonetta & Divertimento (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

No, no: we would never suggest that the music of the Swedish composer Dag Wirén (1905-1986) was in the slightest bit avant-garde. On the contrary, he always strove to write music which, while certainly novel, made for pleasant listening, without either dogma, or pedagogy, or a particular method. His oeuvre, more remarkable for its quality than its quantity, contains five symphonies, of which the Third from 1944 is presented here, and above all the renowned Divertimento for strings from 1957, in which one can discern the legacy of Grieg or Dvořák just as much as Honegger, whom Wirén venerated, or other musicians from the Group of Six; or indeed Shostakovitch in his more wily moments. The writing shares more than a few family resemblances with Jean Françaix, in its impeccable harmonic, thematic and architectural conceptions, all while retaining its light and transparent spirit. During his lifetime, his rejection of the avant-garde was a black mark against his name; but thirty years on from his death, this kind of consideration is no longer relevant. We can finally rediscover Wirén for what he is: an excellent composer. To cut a long story short, it was he who wrote the score to Absent Friend which was Sweden’s entry for the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest – which was won by France Gall, under the flag of Luxembourg, and not of France, as it happens – Absent Friend was neither strictly pop, nor variety, but a piece of pure classical romance, a tragic waltz sung by a truly great operatic baritone, Ingvar Wixell, accompanied by an exclusively classical orchestra, without drums or anything of the sort!

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Matilda Lloyd, Britten Sinfonia & Rumon Gamba – Casta Diva – Operatic arias transcribed for trumpet (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Matilda Lloyd, Britten Sinfonia & Rumon Gamba – Casta Diva – Operatic arias transcribed for trumpet (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:42 minutes | 1018 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Hailed as ‘remarkable’ by The Daily Telegraph, Matilda Lloyd is a young instrumentalist with exceptional poise and musicality. She studied music at the University of Cambridge, Royal Academy of Music, and with HAkan Hardenberger at Musikhogskolan i Malmo. She has since captivated audiences and critics alike with her artistry, communication, and, in the words of Saarbrucker Zeitung (March 2020), ‘flawless sound and virtuosic technique’, with which she brings a unique flair to every performance. She won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Brass Final in 2014, and in 2016 made her debut at the BBC Proms. Casta Diva is Matilda’s debut album on Chandos, about which she writes: ‘Every trumpet player has studied the ultimate technique book, by Jean-Baptiste Arban – a monumental tome affectionately known as ‘The Trumpet Bible’. At the end of the book are sets of theme and variations – my favourite, the Variations on Bellini’s Norma, became the point of departure for this album inspired by nineteenth-century Italian opera, as it uses the aria ‘Casta Diva’, from Bellini’s 1831 opera, as its theme. The album explores the voice of the trumpet in that golden age of opera, highlighting works by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. I hope that the album showcases the beauty, musicality, and technical brilliance of the instrument, and that you find as much enjoyment in listening to, as we did in arranging and recording, these fantastic pieces of music!’

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London Brass, Rumon Gamba – Music of the Angels (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

London Brass, Rumon Gamba – Music of the Angels (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:20 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Edward Gregson began composing from a very early age, and his extensive output covers a wide range of musical sound-worlds. Music for film, television, and theatre sits alongside choral pieces and works for full orchestra. Having played in a brass band as a teenager, he has shown a special affinity in his compositions for brass throughout his career – both for brass band and for symphonic brass, which we celebrate with this new album. His seminal Quintet for Brass, Three Dance Episodes, and Aria for Philip mark his connection to the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble.

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Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Rumon Gamba – Icelandic Works for the Stage (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Rumon Gamba – Icelandic Works for the Stage (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:20 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Páll Ísólfsson was the first director of the Reykjavík Music School, which opened in 1930. Like other musicians, he was forced by the lack of opportunity in Iceland to study abroad but, unlike others, he was able to return and work as the Organist at Reykjavík Cathedral to support his activities as a composer. His music for the early Ibsen play The Feast at Solhaug, performed in 1943 in Norwegian on Norway’s National day, was his theatrical début. This was followed in 1945 by the more ambitious score for Úr Myndabók Jónasar Hallgrímssonar.

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Iceland Symphony Orchestra & Rumon Gamba – d’Indy: Poème des Rivages & Symphony No. 1 (2011/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Iceland Symphony Orchestra & Rumon Gamba – d’Indy: Poème des Rivages & Symphony No. 1 (2011/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:48 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

D’Indy was a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel, and a pupil of César Franck. Fauré described him as ‘The Samson of Music’ for his multifarious and generous-minded work as a composer, conductor, educator, and propagandist who greatly strengthened French musical culture. With a style essentially eclectic and strongly influenced above all by Beethoven and Wagner, d’Indy particularly excelled in orchestral composition. He drew particular inspiration from his native region in southern France, and formed a body of post-romantic works richly orchestrated, often inflected with folk-like melodies, and employing Franck’s well-known ‘cyclic method’.

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Rumon Gamba – Williamson: Santiago de Espada, Our Man in Havana Suite, Concerto Grosso & Sinfonietta (2006/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Rumon Gamba – Williamson: Santiago de Espada, Our Man in Havana Suite, Concerto Grosso & Sinfonietta (2006/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:23 minutes | 999 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra present a delightful collection of works by prolific composer and former Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson in this multi-release recording project. Featuring the colourfully cinematic Our Man in Havana Suite from the opera of the same name—based on the 1958 Graham Green novel—this first volume is a wonderful introduction to Williamson’s oeuvre.

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Rumon Gamba – Rózsa: Overture to a Symphony Concert, Three Hungarian Sketches, Tripartita, Hungarian Serenade (2008/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Rumon Gamba – Rózsa: Overture to a Symphony Concert, Three Hungarian Sketches, Tripartita, Hungarian Serenade (2008/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:41 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

“Excellent performances and superlative sound make this a most enjoyable overture to what should prove to be a most worthwhile enterprise.”
– Gramophone

“… exciting and accessible music … vibrant with local colour and melody. Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic play these scores with brilliance and the Chandos sound is quite superlative.”
– The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music

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Rumon Gamba – Gipps: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, Song for Orchestra & Knight in Armour (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Rumon Gamba – Gipps: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, Song for Orchestra & Knight in Armour (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:16 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

The unjustly neglected and often dissident music of Ruth Gipps is with this album finding all the resonance it deserves by Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, having already championed many British composers from the twentieth century with their series devoted to British Tone Poems and Overtures from the British Isles. While, not surprisingly, there are echoes of the most popular composers of the time – Sibelius, Walton, and Vaughan Williams – the music is notable for its personal voice, confident conception, and vivid writing for the orchestra. Gipps herself actually felt her best works were those for orchestra. In a programme of contrasting impressions and emotions, Symphonies Nos 2 and 4, the former inspired by the Second World War, offer an approachable tuneful idiom. They are complemented by the lyrical, shorter Song for Orchestra and the early tone poem Knight in Armour, premiered at the last Night of the Proms in 1942.

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Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba - Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Juliana Koch, BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:57 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) was born in the English seaside resort of Bexhill-on-Sea. Encouraged as a child by an ambitious pianist mother, she appeared locally as a prodigy pianist. She was accepted by the Royal College of Music in 1937, at the age of sixteen, having won the Caird Scholarship. She quickly matured, both as composer and pianist. She studied with Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob, and later the oboe with Leon Goossens. During the Second World War she gained a position as oboist with the City of Birmingham Orchestra and devoted a great deal of her time to composing.
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BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba – British Tone Poems, Vol. 1 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba - British Tone Poems, Vol. 1 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba – British Tone Poems, Vol. 1 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:41 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Alongside their British Isles Overtures series, the BBC NOW and the conductor Rumon Gamba launch a project to bring often neglected symphonic poems by British composers to wider attention and fame. This first volume presents some of the most individual, yet rarely heard, British tone poems written in the early twentieth century, by composers ranging from the long-established Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Alwyn to Balfour Gardiner and Granville Bantock, giants in their time. Works include Bantock’s atmospheric The Witch of Atlas, based on a poem by Shelley, Frederic Austin’s symphonic rhapsody Spring, Gardiner’s evocation of summer A Berkshire Idyll, recorded here for the first time, and Gurney’s mysterious A Gloucestershire Rhapsody, never performed before 2010.
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BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gerard Schurmann: Film Music (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba - Gerard Schurmann: Film Music (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba – Gerard Schurmann: Film Music (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:25 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Born in 1924 in the then Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Gerard Schurmann grew up in England, and after serving in the Royal Air Force during the war, combined his career as a concert pianist with a diplomatic role as Cultural Attaché at the Netherlands Embassy. On the recommendation of Alan Rawsthorne, Ealing Studios commissioned Schurmann for the score for the Jack Hawkins police drama The Long Arm (released as The Third Key in the US). More commissions followed, initially from the burgeoning British 1950s horror scene (represented here by Konga and Horrors of the Black Museum and then from mainstream cinema. The Ceremony, directed by and starring Laurence Harvey, was followed by Dr Syn, alias The Scarecrow and the WWII action movie Attack on the Iron Coast, starring Lloyd Bridges.
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Rumon Gamba, BBC Philharmonic – British Tone Poems, Vol. 2 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Rumon Gamba, BBC Philharmonic - British Tone Poems, Vol. 2 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Rumon Gamba, BBC Philharmonic – British Tone Poems, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:16 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Chandos presents the eagerly anticipated second volume of Rumon Gamba’s fascinating survey of lesser-known British musical gems. This edition features works from composers including Sir Arthur Bliss, Patrick Hadley, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Herbert Foulds, and more. British-born conductor Rumon Gamba held the positions of Principal Conductor and Music Director of NorrlandsOperan between 2008 and 2015 and Chief Conductor of the Aalborg Symfoniorkester between 2011 and 2015. He was also Chief Conductor and Music Director of Iceland Symphony Orchestra between 2002 and 2010. He regularly leads the BBC orchestras and has appeared at the BBC Proms on a number of occasions. This release includes two world premiere recordings.
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