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Rawsthorne: Symphonic studies; Cello Concerto [CD]

Alan Rawsthorne , David Lloyd-Jones , Royal Scottish National Orchestra Audio CD
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Frequently Bought Together

Rawsthorne: Symphonic studies; Cello Concerto + Violin Concertos Nos. 1 And 2 + Rawsthorne: Symphonies Nos. 1-3
Price For All Three: £17.71

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Product details

  • Orchestra: Royal Scottish National Orchestra
  • Conductor: David Lloyd-Jones
  • Composer: Alan Rawsthorne
  • Audio CD (1 Oct 1999)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Format: CD
  • Label: Naxos
  • ASIN: B000050XA3
  • Other Editions: MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 55,403 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Samples
Song TitleArtist Time Price
Listen  1. Symphonic StudiesDavid Lloyd-Jones21:30Album Only
Listen  2. Oboe Concerto: Maestoso - AllegroDavid Lloyd-Jones 5:37£0.69  Buy MP3 
Listen  3. Oboe Concerto: Allegretto con morbidezzaStephane Rancourt 5:54£0.69  Buy MP3 
Listen  4. Oboe Concerto: VivaceDavid Lloyd-Jones 5:16£0.69  Buy MP3 
Listen  5. Cello Concerto: Allegro lirico (Quasi Variazioni)David Lloyd-Jones11:14Album Only
Listen  6. Cello Concerto: MestoAlexander Baillie12:23Album Only
Listen  7. Cello Concerto: Allegro - VivaceDavid Lloyd-Jones 9:49Album Only


Product Description

Amazon.co.uk

The composer Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971) trained as a dentist before he turned to music, and there is something in his output which reminds me of surgery. Anguish, sorrow and relief infuse his works of which three are represented here. The best of them is the Symphonic Studies of 1939 which was his first big international success. Here the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under David Lloyd-Jones grinds out its whining, drooping, chromatic theme in a one-movement sequence of variations which are almost filmic in their abruptness and colour. The Oboe Concerto of 1947 is a more modest work exploiting the plaintive and moody tone of the instrument until the last movement which is as improbably light-hearted as a dose of laughing-gas. Soloist Stéphane Rancourt plays with prominent exuberance. The Cello Concerto of 1966 is the least appealing work although it is given star billing on the CD cover. Gloom pervades the first movement, a sinister ticking motif the second and a somewhat ponderous and elderly tread the finale. Soloist Alexander Baillie does his best against heavy odds. His cadenza is poetic until the triangle enters ringing like a quiz show bell telling him he has run out of time. --Rick Jones

Product Description

CD Composer: Rawsthorne,Alan

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Little-known failed dentistry music! 13 Mar 2008
By Mr. Mark A. Meldon TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Rawsthorne came late to composition, having tried dentistry and architecture first; I'm glad he changed tack.

This is good mid-twentieth century stuff, with a brief backward glance to Brahms, not Schoenberg. Tuneful and quite dramatic, "Symphonic Studies" comes from 1939, and was first performed, according to the excellent booklet, in Warsaw, four months before disaster befell Poland.

The Oboe Concerto comes from 1947, and the sombre Cello Concerto from 1966, four years before Rawsthorne's death.

This Naxos CD would be a very good introduction to Rawsthorne, then move onto his symphonies and chamber music.

Rawsthorne has been an interesting discovery for me, and I recommend that you give this overlooked composer a try.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars An Impressive Debut Piece 8 Aug 2012
By Mr. A. R. Boyes TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Naxos has been prepared to scour the far flung regions of the classical repertoire and have singlehandedly rescued some fine forgotten composers from oblivion. You could argue that they have done so for Alan Rawsthorne, whose music I often heard on radio three decades ago but has all but disappeared in recent times.

When you hear the "Symphonic Studies" you're surely left scratching your head as to why this neglect has come about. Some compare this to a concerto for orchestra but to me it sounds like a concerto for composer and orchestra. It was Rawsthorne's first full scale orchestral work but is incredibly accomplished showing not just a command of orchestral forces but of symphonic form. It variation based form sounds more like a thoroughly convincing one movement symphony, containing five broad sections. Perhaps the title "Symphonic Studies" sounds a bit dry and daunting. The work itself has plenty of bravura but also includes just as much gentle lyricism.

This gentle lyricism infuses both the other two works: the concertos for Oboe and the Cello. The Cello Concerto has a distinct melancholic vein whilst the Concerto for Oboe and Strings is more classically restrained.

What is striking, and may be part of the reason for Rawsthorne's neglect, is that the later works hardly build on the remarkable "Symphonic Studies". Overall there's a sense of English pastorale mixed with chromatic Hindemith like harmonies. A number of quite conservative minded English composers of the time were strongly influenced by Hindemith and their collective lack of an original voice has led to their neglect. In Rawsthorne's case this is very unfortunate because his music is highly accomplished and always a pleasure to hear.

The performances by the RSNO under David Lloyd Jones are first rate and the soloists; Alexander Baillie and Stephen Rancourt are fine advocates for the concertos. This is an excellent disc, well worth having for the Symphonic Studies alone. If you've not heard them before then make sure you do.
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Amazon.com: 4.7 out of 5 stars  3 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! Bravo! 19 Jan 2001
By K. Farrington - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
It seems inconceivable that for just under six bucks you can get a CD of this quality, played so brilliantly, with the added bonus that the music itself is new. Well, the music is not exactly new but to my ear every bar sounds as fresh and as new as when this young composer started penning his works in the 1930's. Also I have not heard the Symphonic Studies for some years now; I believe that I heard them on vinyl over 20 years ago. The music has a muscular quality compared to most English Music at the time, it is a concerto for orchestra that uses all the components to their virtuosic best. The players seem to relish playing this unfamiliar stuff that keeps the listener enthralled throughout. The Cello Concerto is a unjustly neglected piece, to my mind better than the Delius and Bax offerings in the same genre. The younger composer Rawsthorne seems to be able to go that extra mile in giving us surprises and his premature death is one more loss to our musical heritage to go down with Gerald Finzi whose gentler style somehow compliments Rawsthorne in that together they show respectively the kind and the gritty characteristics of the English psyche. We are norw getting more CDs with Naxos doing their Rawsthorne cycle and Chandos with their recent release of Film Music providing us at last with a wealth of great sound from this underrated and self effacing genius. Top Marks!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Raw Power of Rawsthorne 5 Feb 2001
By Thomas F. Bertonneau - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Where does Neoclassicism begin? Possibly in Tchaikovsky, who wrote a "Rococco Variations" for Cello and Orchestra and a Suite called "Mozartiana." Italian composers such as Alfredo Casella and Gian-Francesco Mailpiero looked back to Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Tartini, and Scarlatti in composing their large bodies of work for orchestra. Stravinsky went on a "Back to Bach" binge and Hindemith wrote a set of chamber concertos that answered Bach's Brandenburg set from the viewpoint of the twentieth century. Feruccio Busoni lies somewhere in the mix, with works like the "Fantasia Contrapuntistica." But the phenemonen is wider than any of these comments suggests. Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971), a British composer, deserves mention under the rubric. He employed devices that we associate with the Baroque: Canon, Fugue, Passacaglia (which he, like Henry Purcell, called Chaconne), and the Fantasy, or Variations. The middle movement of the lively Concerto No. 1 for Piano (1939 - revised 1942) takes the form of a Chaconne, and both outer movements exhibit the moto perpetuo character of Baroque music. The three symphonies (1950, 1959, 1964), like the First Piano Concerto, use imitative forms associated with the Eighteenth, rather than developmental forms associated with the Nineteenth, Century. The prototype of all these works is the remarkable "Symphonic Studies" (1938) for orchestra, premièred at the Warsaw ISCM Festival in 1939. The "Studies" constitute a symphony in all but name, casting the variations-on-a-theme in the form of five large panels that correspond to the movements of a more explicitly sectional work. Thirty years ago, this work appeared on a Lyrita LP. Its dark colors and rather thick chromatic writing fascinated me. Three decades make the chromaticism seem less harsh than it did at the time, but the "Studies" retain their power as a work of extraordinary polyphonic concentration. The final segment is a fugue. It is as convincing a fugue as any composer of the Twentieth Century contrived to write. Truly, Rawthorne's "Symphonic Studies" can rival Schoenberg's "Variations for Orchestra" as a virtuoso display of thematic transformation colored forth in orchestral garb. The "Studies" also takes its place in a flock of British compositions that employ extremely rigorous variation-technique: Sir Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations," Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Tallis Fantasia," Sir Arthur Bliss's "Discourse for Orchestra," and William Walton's "Variations on a Theme by Hindemith." The Cello Concerto (1966) comes from late in Rawsthorne's life. It returns to the darkness and concentration of the "Symphonic Studies" and is one of his thorniest works. For diversion, we also get the charming Oboe Concerto, with strings. Naxos has given us the two Violin Concertos, a disc of chamber works, a disc of string-orchestra works, and now this first-rate coupling of the "Studies" and the Cello Concerto. I do hope that they provide us with the three symphonies, with the three piano concertos (one of them, the last, for two pianos), and with the three cantatas - "Medieval Diptych," "Carmen Vitale," and "The God in the Cave." At the asking price, it would be a shame to pass this up.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Fine music in good performances 23 Jan 2009
By G.D. - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
If not the most obvious introduction to the composer, this fine disc from Naxos can be safely recommended. The Symphonic Studies in one movement of five sections is not an easy work - indeed, it is almost forbidding at times. But there are lots of colorful nuances and almost kaleidoscopic mood changes to it, and those who persevere will be rewarded - especially since the performance here is as fine as it is.

I am a little less sure about the oboe concerto (but then again I am usually disappointed when great composers turn to the wind concerto medium - Nielsen being the obvious exception). It is surely enjoyable and varied and deeply felt, and I find no faults with Rancourt's performance. The cello concerto is a stronger work, even though it (as opposed to the oboe concerto) feels a little grey. Fortunately, it receives a superb reading from Baillie, with distinguished orchestral accompaniment. Nothing to complain about with the sound quality, either. Recommended.
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