Overtures from the British Isles, Vol. 1

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Half-forgotten overtures show the vigour of Britain's musical revivial throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras. — BBC Music Magazine, February 2014, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 6th Jan 2014
Catalogue No: CHAN10797
Label: Chandos
Length: 77 minutes

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Austin, F: The Sea Venturers

Work length11:15

$3.00

$2.60

$3.20

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Stanford: Oedipus tyrannus, Op. 29: Prelude

Work length8:35

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Coleridge-Taylor: The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30: III. Overture

Work length11:31

$3.00

$2.60

$3.20

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Cowen: The Butterfly's Ball

Work length11:56

$3.00

$2.60

$3.20

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Bantock: The Frogs

Work length8:35

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie: The Little Minister, Op. 57: Overture

Work length8:18

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Sullivan, A: Macbeth: Overture

Work length8:20

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Gardiner, H B: Overture to a Comedy

Work length8:29

$2.00

$1.95

$2.40

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Rumon Gamba
Recorded: 24-26 April 2013
Recording Venue: BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

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Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales present a collection of rarely heard overtures from the British Isles. Among these is Sir Frederic Cowen’s Overture to The Butterfly’s Ball (1901), illustrating a popular children’s poem byWilliam Roscoe. All is vividly evoked by Cowen’s pleasing melodic lines and delicate instrumental colour. It is easy to see why, in its day, the piece was a firm favourite, being played 26 times at the Proms between 1900 and 1940. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor achieved immediate success early in his career with his four-part cantata Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha. The Overture, composed in 1899, was intended as a prelude to the complete cycle but is now rarely heard in this context. Indeed, very little of the material in this Overture comes from the other Hiawatha pieces, the principal theme being the spiritual ‘Nobody knows the trouble I see, Lord’. Perhaps better known as a leading baritone of his generation, Frederic Austin was also a composer of some achievement. In his tuneful and exciting concert overture The Sea Venturers, from 1936, he wanted to evoke ‘something of the lives and character of English seamen who… took peril and pleasure as it came’.

Reviews

February 2014

Half-forgotten overtures show the vigour of Britain's musical revivial throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

26th January 2014

This lively sequence shakes the archive dust from eight overtures by British composers, mainly knights, who lived from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries...Austin’s The Sea Venturers [has] a genuine maritime evocativeness: blustery on the outside, wistful in the middle.

23rd January 2014

as Rumon Gamba's nicely slick performances with BBCNOW show, these are all nicely proportioned pieces; if never especially memorable, they don't deserve the total neglect they've suffered for the last three-quarters of a century.

Overtures from the British Isles, Vol. 1

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