We use cookies to make your experience better. To comply with the new e-Privacy directive, we need to ask for your consent to set the cookies. Learn more.
Bantock, Holbrooke & Rootham Orchestral Works
Both Cyril Bradley Rootham and Josef Holbrooke worked under handicaps, one of which they shared. Why is most of their music unfamiliar to listeners who did not hear it before the war? The answer incurs knowledge of a historical phenomenon. Vaughan Williams was born in 1872, only six years after Strauss and Sibelius, and eight after Debussy. Within ten years all the following were born:- Holst, Ravel, Ireland, Bax, Bartok, Stravinsky, and the two composers who now concern us. As in the sixteenth century a whole range of musical peaks and foothills rose almost within a decade. To change the metaphor, it must be stimulating for composers to find themselves within a galaxy, but from some of them must perforce be withheld the wider recognition they might have earned if they had shone alone, not among brilliantly distinctive stars.
They were British and contemporary, yet utterly different in expression and style, as different as Elgar and Delius.
kg
Review | "This CD is great value for money. These are three works that ought to be in the public domain - two fine tone poems and a great 'Symphony'. As usual with Lyrita the sound quality is superb, the playing totally inspiring, the programme notes are helpful and the repertoire is totally challenging - and perhaps even essential." John France, musicweb-international.com |
---|