Wilson and co’s follow-up to English Music for Strings is another gem. And Quatuor Bozzini immerse themselves in Radigue’s Occam Delta XV
• A new release from John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London – a well-known ensemble in the 1950s, relaunched in 2018 by Wilson for special projects – has become a red-letter day in the recording calendar. Following an English Music for Strings disc in 2021 (Britten, Bliss, Bridge, Berkeley), the group’s new album, of Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius and Elgar (Chandos), presents two string masterpieces from earlier in the 20th century: Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro (1901, 1904-5) and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910, revised 1919). The Concerto for String Orchestra by Herbert Howells, influenced by RVW and Elgar but with a gritty modernist accent, and Delius’s rhapsodic Late Swallows (arr. Fenby), complete the programme.
As ever, the brilliance of the playing makes this essential listening, the precision and attention to detail alive and exhilarating. The entire disc holds the attention, but the last movement of the Elgar, urgent and impassioned, has you on the edge of you seat: a tour de force.
Continue reading...by Fiona Maddocks via Electronic music | The Guardian
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