Wonderful review and great advocacy, Dave. I already know several of those recordings, and will check out your other recommendations, because - I must keep on listening!
so happy to see this series making a comeback, it's one of my favorite series on your channel and I've used it as a source of recommendations for a while now
Can I put in a word for the excellent Lennox Berkeley recordings? Delicious, somewhat Gallic, neo-classical symphonies with a bit of an edge. Glad to mentioned the extraordinary John Foulds !
Great review ! Lyrita is one of the very best labels to discover british music (way more adventurous than EMI or Decca). There’s also a whole series of Lyrita recordings of Daniel Jones, John Kinsella and Alun Hoddinott. Don’t miss those ! Also Alwyn conducting his symphonies: priceless !
Great to see some love for Lyrita (which here in the UK is usually pronounced "Liritter" by the way, I assume after its founder). You're bang on about the recording quality of those early discs, and collectors worldwide still bust a gut to get hold of original vinyl pressings. But they've transferred fabulously to CD, and are much more generous in playing time. My personal fave is the Boult Moeran disc you mention, which is near perfect music for me - in fact, I reckon the Moeran Symphony to be my favourite English symphony, and Boult's is its best performance and recording for me.
Some of my favourites in your top 10. Arnold Dances of course; Ireland...I come from Sussex, just down the road from Rock Mill where Ireland lived; Moeran, wonderful Sym and one of Boults finest; Bax, I came to Bax via 1st and 2nd Syms and then read in Colin Scott Sutherland's book that the first three form a group, so I'd better find a 3rd. Lyrita didn't do one, but Ed Downes did on RCA with LSO, an ok stopgap til Chandos did theirs! My favourite is Del Mar's 6th...he came to Bristol to perf it in the 80s, and that was tremendous live. My faves at the moment (I have 98 Lyrita LPs - I used to own a record store!) are Berkeley with the Serenade and Div and Partita etc. composer conducting the LPO and Elizabeth Maconchy Serenata Conc. and Sym for Double Str Orch LSO/Handley. Oops, nearly forgot, I now live only three miles from Wyastone Leys, the home of Nimbus and the base in which the Richard Itter archive is being sifted (I think that great producer Mike Clements is involved) and recordings planned and remastered....Lyrita is licensed to The Wyastone Estate.
Excellent label & a very good selection of cds. I have a soft spot for the Lyrita Walter Leigh orchestral works cd with the harpsichord concertino, Agincourt overture, The Midsummer Night's Dream etc
The Lyrita/ Boult Bax symphonic poems you mentioned are also stunning - Boult's take on Tintagel very different from Barbirolli's- somehow leaner, fleeter, but still packing a punch
Boy oh boy do I love me some Lyrita! A couple of other outstanding orchestral titles to consider: - Walter Leigh orchestral music, including the wonderful Harpsichord Concertino - Geoffrey Bush orchestral music Lyrita also did some phenomenonal chamber recordings. Among my favorites: - John Ireland complete piano music, with the aforementioned Eric Parkin - Herbert Howells chamber works - just gorgeous! Incidentally, that disc of Mathias concertos was originally a Decca release. Lyrita later obtained the rights for its first CD issue. Weird that it was on Decca.
To this list, I might add the other Lyrita disc of Holst orchestral works...to include his orchestral version of Hammersmith. All led by Sir Adrian Boult. The Scherzo was Holst's final work, and quite brilliant. It was meant as a part of the symphony, which, of course, he didn't complete.
I have discovered your channel some days ago. Thank you for your reviews, I'm discovering and re-discovering a lot of repertoire. Waiting for some spanish repertoire review!
If you can find it, I would highly reccomend the recording of Foulds' music for string quartet. The Quartetto Intimo, in particular was a revelation to me.
Also, Foulds’ Cello Sonata is a screaming masterpiece - one of the pinnacles of the genre IMO - yet is criminally unknown. The finale has the most glorious tune that you won’t be able to get out of your head!
Regarding the FOULDS disc (Warning..Tracks 2 & 3 were mis-labeled: "April" and "Pasquinade" are reversed). My late brother caught "April England" on the radio, and we both FLIPPED over it. The middle section is like a grand, BLAZINGLY colorful take-off on the Pachebel Canon; just stunning. The HELAS Suite for strings and percussion is wonderful, but the THREE MANTRAS are Off-the-Chart; they have to be heard to be believed. I was once in Tower Records in Chicago, and I asked the guy at the counter to play the First Mantra over their sound system and watch the customer reaction; THREE within the first 90 seconds asked him what it was and if they could buy it! Seriously, any youngster today who is considering pursuing a composing career should listen to the Mantras (written in the 1920's) and ask themselves "why should I even TRY?" (and I know I'm repeating myself, but the Second Mantra, with offstage women's chorus, is worth the high price of the disc itself; Oramo's recording is also superb). Warning #2..the opening "Cabaret" is a light, inconsequential work, hardly worthy of standing alongside the remainder of this amazing music. LR
Yes, I particularly like the Imo Holst recordings of her fathers music (don't forget there is a wonderful disc of her own chamber music on the Court Lane Music label). On a recent trip to Aldeburgh, Suffolk (Imo was Ben Britten's assistant for the Snape Fest.) we went to see her studio house, which is available to stay in if you are a bona fide researcher - we stayed in Viola Tunnard's cottage (she was Britten's favoured accompanist and harpsichordist) just off the High St.....before, we used to stay in 'Cosy Nook', Britten and Pears' housekeeper's cottage in the grounds of the Red House, which is now open to the public....although to stay in the cottage the same restrictions apply as for Imo's. Did you know the original Lyrita Lp of Holst conducts Holst SRCS 34 was one of those chosen by Peter Walker of Quad electrostatics to demonstrate his speakers at the Paris HiFi show in the 60s, consequently that title sold quite well (better thanThe Planets apparently!), and I still see S/H copies on my regular rummages round vinyl shops in Paris! I still play my Lyrita Lps (98 titles on Lp!) on Quad electrostatics!
I have a recording on Lyrita of Malcolm Arnold conducting his 4th symphony. A wonderful symphony with bongos and other percussion. Stunning recording and unique because of the slower tempo he takes it at.
Arnold conducts all his symphonies slower - sometimes a lot slower - than everybody else. That recording of the 4th is masterful. Arnold unveils layers of meaning not touched by other conductors. The 7th (available on YT) is devastating in its impact.
I was hoping to hear about Gerald Finzi, and Rubbra, but this is one heck of a selection, and posthumous vengeance for the cultural vandalism perpetrated by the BBC third channel against most of these composers - Malcolm Arnold probably escaped because of his successful and admired movie soundtrack work. (I loathe the BBC for many reasons, but the butchery of contemporary music is certainly one.) One story. Most of my music collection is made of vinyl, because back in the early nineties, when cds were coming in, people would give away whole collections of records, and all you had to do was turn up with a trolley and a good set of muscles. So, among many other treasures, I have the original Philips Sir Colin Davis recording of The Midsummer Marriage, good as new, and including half a dozen articles and interviews with the composer that the original user had cut out from newspapers and magazines and neglected to take back.
What a wonderful Video! Thank you! You seem to be in a Holst mood. I am, too - as each summer. For me it’s summer music, esp. the disc on Unicorn with Willcocks.
If it's unusual repertoire you're into then you could do worse than to invest in the box set of "British Symphonies" on Lyrita, with symphonic works by many of the composers mentioned here and one that isn't (William Alwyn, whose work I really love.) A great set.
Great idea, the original single discs (mostly) I can find, are quite expensive. I did not yet own any, unfortunately. There are also boxed sets with complete string concertos (no harp concertos included unfortunately) and piano concertos. As you say, it’s an investment right?😅
I listened to the Lyrita string concertos set and have to say: they’re good performances but the sonics are not great at all. New or old recordings doesn’t matter much, you get a listenable but rather flat and dry sound more often than you would like. Maybe the symphonies set is better, I did buy that too. But an extensive Lyrita collection is not on my wish list anymore.
So happy to see this series return. Such a wonderful way to be exposed to new music, recordings & celebrate the great recordings/composers already known 👍 Nimbus is still in business?😮
My first 2 Lyrita recordings were the Sterndale-Bennett piano concertos. Definitely not 20th century, but who cares which century great music was composed in
Have the English and 'Cornish Dances on LP. Outstanding sound and extremely quite surfaces. My local Tower Records store imported all the Lyrita recordings back in the day.
Those Lyrita LP's you found in the Milford GoodWill were probably a write-off dump from a larger record store. In a couple of the Towers in Ca., they put the rare imports way in the back, like video stores did later with the adult stuff or in a separate 18+ only room. Will be looking for these titles soon. You've probably reviewed Arnold's CD set on Sony(?), I taped the scratchy library Everest LP of a Symphony and the Scottish Dances with my trusty old casette recorder over forty years ago. Have a CD of Ireland's 70th birthday (1949) concert, London Overture, These Things Shall Be, the Piano Concerto with Eileen Joyce (who also made the first recording of the piece in 1942).
If ever there was a composer who encourages recordings of 'Clumps', it must be Holst. I recall the talk you gave some time ago about his self-criticism, and the amount of short pieces that are not, these days anyway, 'concert friendly'. But as you also commented he is a very fine composer indeed, though even with his rarely performed works better known than the other British composers in this talk.
Not so stunning, but entirely fun is the disc of the Holst military band suites using a (I think) Gordon Jacob transcription. As a fan of those works, it’s interesting to hear them in that guise.
From what I understand, William Glock, controller of music at the BBC in the 1960’s was very much in favour of the 20th c Avant-Garde composers (?) Hence the contemporary or near contemporary traditional style composers were very much ignored by the Corporation and seldom if ever heard on radio. Fortunately we live in a more informed time and thanks very often to the smaller independent recording companies and more enlightened orchestras there is access to some really great music denied to former generations.
Glock was a man of his time. It’s true that many composers were ignored during his reign at the BBC, but some of these (such as Dallapiccola) were far from conservative. And of course, he commissioned one of the early Malcolm Arnold symphonies (no 3 I think) and he was actually far more catholic in his tastes than he’s often given credit for. And he adored Haydn, which has to be a good thing.
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.83[2/2] ประสบการณ์ขนหัวลุกจากตำนานวงการผี!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/T_kFecQw7Ds/mqdefault.jpg)
Wonderful review and great advocacy, Dave. I already know several of those recordings, and will check out your other recommendations, because - I must keep on listening!
Awesome, thank you!
Bought the Holst and Arnold albums. Wonderful. Everything you said they were.
so happy to see this series making a comeback, it's one of my favorite series on your channel and I've used it as a source of recommendations for a while now
Can I put in a word for the excellent Lennox Berkeley recordings? Delicious, somewhat Gallic, neo-classical symphonies with a bit of an edge. Glad to mentioned the extraordinary John Foulds !
Great review ! Lyrita is one of the very best labels to discover british music (way more adventurous than EMI or Decca). There’s also a whole series of Lyrita recordings of Daniel Jones, John Kinsella and Alun Hoddinott. Don’t miss those ! Also Alwyn conducting his symphonies: priceless !
Glad this series is back!
Great to see some love for Lyrita (which here in the UK is usually pronounced "Liritter" by the way, I assume after its founder). You're bang on about the recording quality of those early discs, and collectors worldwide still bust a gut to get hold of original vinyl pressings. But they've transferred fabulously to CD, and are much more generous in playing time. My personal fave is the Boult Moeran disc you mention, which is near perfect music for me - in fact, I reckon the Moeran Symphony to be my favourite English symphony, and Boult's is its best performance and recording for me.
Some of my favourites in your top 10. Arnold Dances of course; Ireland...I come from Sussex, just down the road from Rock Mill where Ireland lived; Moeran, wonderful Sym and one of Boults finest; Bax, I came to Bax via 1st and 2nd Syms and then read in Colin Scott Sutherland's book that the first three form a group, so I'd better find a 3rd. Lyrita didn't do one, but Ed Downes did on RCA with LSO, an ok stopgap til Chandos did theirs! My favourite is Del Mar's 6th...he came to Bristol to perf it in the 80s, and that was tremendous live.
My faves at the moment (I have 98 Lyrita LPs - I used to own a record store!) are Berkeley with the Serenade and Div and Partita etc. composer conducting the LPO and Elizabeth Maconchy Serenata Conc. and Sym for Double Str Orch LSO/Handley.
Oops, nearly forgot, I now live only three miles from Wyastone Leys, the home of Nimbus and the base in which the Richard Itter archive is being sifted (I think that great producer Mike Clements is involved) and recordings planned and remastered....Lyrita is licensed to The Wyastone Estate.
Excellent label & a very good selection of cds. I have a soft spot for the Lyrita Walter Leigh orchestral works cd with the harpsichord concertino, Agincourt overture, The Midsummer Night's Dream etc
The Lyrita/ Boult Bax symphonic poems you mentioned are also stunning - Boult's take on Tintagel very different from Barbirolli's- somehow leaner, fleeter, but still packing a punch
Outstanding talk.
Boy oh boy do I love me some Lyrita! A couple of other outstanding orchestral titles to consider:
- Walter Leigh orchestral music, including the wonderful Harpsichord Concertino
- Geoffrey Bush orchestral music
Lyrita also did some phenomenonal chamber recordings. Among my favorites:
- John Ireland complete piano music, with the aforementioned Eric Parkin
- Herbert Howells chamber works - just gorgeous!
Incidentally, that disc of Mathias concertos was originally a Decca release. Lyrita later obtained the rights for its first CD issue. Weird that it was on Decca.
Great, informative discussion. A whole new perspective
To this list, I might add the other Lyrita disc of Holst orchestral works...to include his orchestral version of Hammersmith. All led by Sir Adrian Boult. The Scherzo was Holst's final work, and quite brilliant. It was meant as a part of the symphony, which, of course, he didn't complete.
I have discovered your channel some days ago. Thank you for your reviews, I'm discovering and re-discovering a lot of repertoire. Waiting for some spanish repertoire review!
There are many. Look them up by composer!
If you can find it, I would highly reccomend the recording of Foulds' music for string quartet. The Quartetto Intimo, in particular was a revelation to me.
A lovely work--very beautiful.
Also, Foulds’ Cello Sonata is a screaming masterpiece - one of the pinnacles of the genre IMO - yet is criminally unknown. The finale has the most glorious tune that you won’t be able to get out of your head!
I’ve been going through Lyrita a lot the last couple of months. Thanks for this Dave
OH, yes! I've played all those Arnold dances.
I've conducted the 8 English Dances; they practically play themselves, since they are very idiomatically written and scored. LR
Regarding the FOULDS disc (Warning..Tracks 2 & 3 were mis-labeled: "April" and "Pasquinade" are reversed). My late brother caught "April England" on the radio, and we both FLIPPED over it. The middle section is like a grand, BLAZINGLY colorful take-off on the Pachebel Canon; just stunning. The HELAS Suite for strings and percussion is wonderful, but the THREE MANTRAS are Off-the-Chart; they have to be heard to be believed. I was once in Tower Records in Chicago, and I asked the guy at the counter to play the First Mantra over their sound system and watch the customer reaction; THREE within the first 90 seconds asked him what it was and if they could buy it! Seriously,
any youngster today who is considering pursuing a composing career should listen to the Mantras (written in the 1920's) and ask themselves "why should I even TRY?" (and I know I'm repeating myself, but the Second Mantra, with offstage women's chorus, is worth the high price of the disc itself; Oramo's recording is also superb).
Warning #2..the opening "Cabaret" is a light, inconsequential work, hardly worthy of standing alongside the remainder of this amazing music. LR
I have three of these. I also have an Imogen Holst conducts Gustav Holst disc I turn to after the Atherton conducts Holst disk.
Yes, I particularly like the Imo Holst recordings of her fathers music (don't forget there is a wonderful disc of her own chamber music on the Court Lane Music label). On a recent trip to Aldeburgh, Suffolk (Imo was Ben Britten's assistant for the Snape Fest.) we went to see her studio house, which is available to stay in if you are a bona fide researcher - we stayed in Viola Tunnard's cottage (she was Britten's favoured accompanist and harpsichordist) just off the High St.....before, we used to stay in 'Cosy Nook', Britten and Pears' housekeeper's cottage in the grounds of the Red House, which is now open to the public....although to stay in the cottage the same restrictions apply as for Imo's.
Did you know the original Lyrita Lp of Holst conducts Holst SRCS 34 was one of those chosen by Peter Walker of Quad electrostatics to demonstrate his speakers at the Paris HiFi show in the 60s, consequently that title sold quite well (better thanThe Planets apparently!), and I still see S/H copies on my regular rummages round vinyl shops in Paris!
I still play my Lyrita Lps (98 titles on Lp!) on Quad electrostatics!
I have a recording on Lyrita of Malcolm Arnold conducting his 4th symphony. A wonderful symphony with bongos and other percussion. Stunning recording and unique because of the slower tempo he takes it at.
Arnold conducts all his symphonies slower - sometimes a lot slower - than everybody else. That recording of the 4th is masterful. Arnold unveils layers of meaning not touched by other conductors. The 7th (available on YT) is devastating in its impact.
I was hoping to hear about Gerald Finzi, and Rubbra, but this is one heck of a selection, and posthumous vengeance for the cultural vandalism perpetrated by the BBC third channel against most of these composers - Malcolm Arnold probably escaped because of his successful and admired movie soundtrack work. (I loathe the BBC for many reasons, but the butchery of contemporary music is certainly one.) One story. Most of my music collection is made of vinyl, because back in the early nineties, when cds were coming in, people would give away whole collections of records, and all you had to do was turn up with a trolley and a good set of muscles. So, among many other treasures, I have the original Philips Sir Colin Davis recording of The Midsummer Marriage, good as new, and including half a dozen articles and interviews with the composer that the original user had cut out from newspapers and magazines and neglected to take back.
If you missed it, Dave covered some Rubbra in one of his overflow videos a short while ago.
What a wonderful Video! Thank you! You seem to be in a Holst mood. I am, too - as each summer. For me it’s summer music, esp. the disc on Unicorn with Willcocks.
I now have 42 Lyrita CDs, including 4 of these. Will dip in again soon as there's so much intriguing stuff in their catalogue.
If it's unusual repertoire you're into then you could do worse than to invest in the box set of "British Symphonies" on Lyrita, with symphonic works by many of the composers mentioned here and one that isn't (William Alwyn, whose work I really love.) A great set.
Great idea, the original single discs (mostly) I can find, are quite expensive. I did not yet own any, unfortunately. There are also boxed sets with complete string concertos (no harp concertos included unfortunately) and piano concertos. As you say, it’s an investment right?😅
Ah the pain. Can stream on Spotify resolution or on Tidal at cd resolution…but jumbled track order.
I listened to the Lyrita string concertos set and have to say: they’re good performances but the sonics are not great at all. New or old recordings doesn’t matter much, you get a listenable but rather flat and dry sound more often than you would like. Maybe the symphonies set is better, I did buy that too. But an extensive Lyrita collection is not on my wish list anymore.
Update: the British symphonies set fortunately contains good quality sound! Know what you buy, it’s a mixed bag Lyrita.
Danke!
Thank you very much!
So happy to see this series return.
Such a wonderful way to be exposed to new music, recordings & celebrate the great recordings/composers already known 👍
Nimbus is still in business?😮
Yes. They seem to be just fine.
My first 2 Lyrita recordings were the Sterndale-Bennett piano concertos. Definitely not 20th century, but who cares which century great music was composed in
Have the English and 'Cornish Dances on LP. Outstanding sound and extremely quite surfaces. My local Tower Records store imported all the Lyrita recordings back in the day.
I would add William Wordsworth symphonies 2 and 3, good stuff!
Those Lyrita LP's you found in the Milford GoodWill were probably a write-off dump from a larger record store. In a couple of the Towers in Ca., they put the rare imports way in the back, like video stores did later with the adult stuff or in a separate 18+ only room. Will be looking for these titles soon. You've probably reviewed Arnold's CD set on Sony(?), I taped the scratchy library Everest LP of a Symphony and the Scottish Dances with my trusty old casette recorder over forty years ago.
Have a CD of Ireland's 70th birthday (1949) concert, London Overture, These Things Shall Be, the Piano Concerto with Eileen Joyce (who also made the first recording of the piece in 1942).
If ever there was a composer who encourages recordings of 'Clumps', it must be Holst. I recall the talk you gave some time ago about his self-criticism, and the amount of short pieces that are not, these days anyway, 'concert friendly'. But as you also commented he is a very fine composer indeed, though even with his rarely performed works better known than the other British composers in this talk.
Not so stunning, but entirely fun is the disc of the Holst military band suites using a (I think) Gordon Jacob transcription. As a fan of those works, it’s interesting to hear them in that guise.
From what I understand, William Glock, controller of music at the BBC in the 1960’s was very much in favour of the 20th c Avant-Garde composers (?) Hence the contemporary or near contemporary traditional style composers were very much ignored by the Corporation and seldom if ever heard on radio. Fortunately we live in a more informed time and thanks very often to the smaller independent recording companies and more enlightened orchestras there is access to some really great music denied to former generations.
Glock was a man of his time. It’s true that many composers were ignored during his reign at the BBC, but some of these (such as Dallapiccola) were far from conservative. And of course, he commissioned one of the early Malcolm Arnold symphonies (no 3 I think) and he was actually far more catholic in his tastes than he’s often given credit for. And he adored Haydn, which has to be a good thing.
I must buy Foulds' music recorded by Lyrita and compare it with that of Sakari Oramo and Birmingham SO.