MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW
Plain text for smartphones
and printers


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from:


Sir Peter MAXWELL DAVIES (b. 1934)
Piano Concerto (1997)* [36:02]
Worldes Blis - Motet for Orchestra (1966-69) [42:23]
Kathryn Stott (piano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Peter Maxwell Davies
rec. St Augustine’s Church, Kilburn, London, 12 November 1997 (tracks 1-3), All Saints Church, Tooting, London, March 1993 (tracks 4-9), DDD
Previously released on Collins Classics in 1993 and 1998
NAXOS 8.572357 [78:25]

Experience Classicsonline


Maxwell Davies seems to have something of the reputation of a reclusive rock-star. Somehow it’s intensified by an Orcadian Nordic glamour. His early works defined iconoclasm but then works such as Farewell to Stromness and, to a degree, his First Symphony mapped, remapped and broadened his image. A goodly stream of symphonies and concertos stretches from the late 1970s onwards.
 
This inspired Naxos project rides on the broad shoulders of a shoal of deleted Collins Classics CDs from the 1990s. They have for the most part occupied themselves with the symphonies and (newly recorded) the Naxos Quartets. It will, I am sure, pick up the Strathclyde Concertos and the other concertos and non-symphonic works in the fullness of time. In this process the present disc is a by no means insignificant entry.

These are dissonant works but are not as forbidding or as unaccountable as you may have remembered Maxwell Davies’ works of the 1960s. That has been my experience. Mind you, I have not gone back to his Pierrot Players works and The Songs of a Mad King.
 
The Piano Concerto is in four movements. It bursts on to the scene with a landslide of notes - an enraged wild-eyed medusa. Soon however it melts into a solipsistic dream with dissonance applied freely. The music is overarched by the fanfare figure that Britten uses in his Serenade: The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls. The RPO bring playing of the utmost tenderness to the second movement. This is, at heart, very romantic and at times sentimental. Such kaleidoscopic variety! The third movement is memorable for dreamy jazzy little figurations. It’s also very English. The finale evokes a westering sun setting impossibly slowly and ending with reminiscences of those trumpet fanfares from the first movement but lightly sprinkled with dissonance.
 
The Concerto is dedicated to Kathryn Stott who worked with the RPO on other projects including Dutton’s fantastic reissue of the Ireland, Bridge, Walton works for piano and orchestra.
 
Worldes Blis is from thirty years earlier. Its colours are subdued. We seem to be led through a darkling Schoenbergian forest then into a tragic Tod und Verklärung episode, rising to a fearful jagged dawn. The other episodes - which play continuously but are separately tracked - make play with noodling plangency, purposeful belligerence, anxiety and a wild though not fast pulse. This remains a most imaginative work which I liked far more than I had expected. It ends with a quiet un-emphatic murmur from the woodwind and that's it - no false heroics, no flamboyant theatricals. The work’s title is taken from a thirteenth-century plainchant and speaks of the very Baxian theme of the transience of life and beauty.
 
The better than useful liner-notes are by David Nice and Richard Whitehouse.
 
Maxwell Davies’ 80th birthday falls in 2014 so we can look forward to much more and by then the completion of the Naxos 17 CD project to reissue all the Collins Classics originals.
 
Rob Barnett 

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Error processing SSI file