Sinfonia of London and John Wilson: Ravel, Berkeley, Pounds

Out now 👉lnk.to/CHSA5324ID
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 première recording.
Filmed at Church of St Augustine, Kilburn, London.
Video by Alex James.

[@Tsobanian]

It would be lovely if John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London recorded Alfredo Casella's orchestration for Balakirev's Islamey and J.S. Bach's Chaconne BWV1004. Especially Alfredo Casella's orchestration for Mily Balakirev's Islamey, is an orchestral tour de force. It will stretch the orchestra to the limit. There is incredible volume per page, at least one page requires 30 staves, there is textural complexity, divisi strings, tutti passages that demand considerable instrumentation, but there are also passages full of colour and delicacy with subtle and fine instrumental soli emitting mesmerising melodic writing.

[@tonyscottinFrance]

Who is the trumpet player?