Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
English music at its sumptuous best, 22 Mar 2002
If you are unaware of the name 'Sir Granville Bantock' - a name in itself redolent of times gone by - then blame the arbiters of classical music who attempted to cast him into the dustbin of history, and thank the magnificent combination of Hyperion and Vernon Handley for bringing him back to a new generation of listeners.This is music on the heroic, epic scale, as demonstrated by the huge resources that are required to play it. The themes are derived mainly from Celtic mythology, and are full of rich imagery and colour. When you hear the six harps playing together in the Celtic Symphony it is a complete revelation. The main pieces on the CD are the 'Celtic Symphony' and 'A Hebridean Symphony'. There is an enormous amount of music here - over 73 minutes - all of which deserves to be heard. The quality of the playing is exactly as you would expect, given the conductor and orchestra (RPO). If you are not moved and excited by this spendidly rich feast, then check your pulse!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An much underrated friend of R.Strauss and Elgar., 10 Jul 2000
By A Customer
The works on this disc are probably the better known of Bantock's works, along with "Fifine at the Fair" on Hyperion CD (CDA66630). The "Hebridean Symphony" is based on Hebridean folk-song and is not as original as the later "Celtic Symphony" for string orchestra and six harps. "The Witch of Atlas" is a long multisectional tone-poem based on Shelley's epic of the same name. My personal favourite is "The Sea Reivers", a short a rumbustious tone-poem sub-titled "Hebridean Sea Poem No.2" you can almost feel the Atlantic's huge breakers beating on the rocky crags. And despite all the Hebridean and Celtic in these works Bantock was from London. A fine disc and exciting performances.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Northern dusk..., 12 Aug 2006
So much hokum written about such a sublime collection of Granville's music.
Shocking that this is almost forgotten, erased from the numb lands of the dull gods of taste, but such is fashion and cultural pogrom.
Ah, well.
The Celtic symphony is, despite the fact that it's the later work, certainly the weaker of the two; less ambitious, less affecting, less powerful. Still, it's a gentle wash of delight, with some references to folk themes and structures that almost slip into parody, but escape by the skin of their teeth and reel off over the horizon with a wicked glint in their eyes.
The Hebridean symphony, by contrast, is a work of sublime skill and gorgeous, slow burning warmth; some sort of great capture of the savagery and desperation and joy and struggle of the land and people and water, of a culture that was collapsing, that had been annihilated in the Clearances and had burgeoned and clung on with the great expansion of the distilleries which were soon to die when the American market shrank with the introduction of prohibition.
There's a mistake made with these symphonies, a suggestion that they only sing of the sea.
This is not just music of the sea, it's music of the land and the people, a lament and a passionate evocation, a fierce ember caught gentle in the dusk.
But, whatever you choose to take from this music, don't let it be forgotten. Make sure this is heard, make sure it's remembered.
Like the lights on Iona during the Dark Ages, the libraries and scholars out on the fringes, this is worth passing down.
The Hebridean torch is still warm, lend an ear, listen to the landscape and the ocean, and run with it, let it catch again...
Everyone needs a fine hearth to gather round...
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