Category: Forthcoming meeting

Meeting

The last meeting of the Society was on Monday, March 2nd.  We were pleased to welcome a speaker from EM Records, based locally at Blandford Forum, which is the recording arm of the English Music Festival and fulfils the EMF’s aims of celebrating and preserving overlooked works by British composers throughout the centuries.  It has a strong focus on the early twentieth century: the Golden Renaissance of English music. EM Records resolves to bring this glorious music to a world-wide audience. In keeping with the unique spirit of the Festival, each disc released by EM Records will contain at least one World Première recording. 

As well as learning some of what is involved in preparing, recording and producing CDs of the highest quality, we also gained an insight into the issues raised when unearthing and interpreting previously unpublished manuscripts.  Recordings of better known English composers like Vaughan Williams, Holst and Stanford were interspersed with some lovely recordings of works by lesser known lights such as David Owen Morris and Henry Walford Davies, the latter being the composer of the instantly recognisable RAF March past.

This is the second time the Society has gone behind the scenes, so to speak, and heard about the process of recording a CD.

See also English Music Festival

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Members evening

The Society met for the last time before Christmas and listened to selections by members of their favourites.  There was an extremely wide ranging and very interesting choice of music starting with a version of Ruslan and Ludmilla played by a horn ensemble.  Other items included the prelude to Mascagni’s opera William Ratcliff demonstrating that he was not just a ‘one opera’ composer.

Among other presentations was a mono recording of Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier.  Bach composed these before the piano forte was invented so some modern renditions are not entirely faithful to the sort of sound he intended.  This early recording by Edwin Fischer was perhaps truer to that.  Also by Bach we heard an aria from St Matthew Passion where the alto and violin weave through the melody.

For Wagner lovers – and even for non-Wagner lovers – we heard the well known prelude to the Master Singers.   A lighter touch was provided by Dudley Moore playing And the Same to You – a parody of Beethoven, performed at Beyond the Fringe.

Other pieces included:

  • Gustav Mahler’s Ruckertleider No 5 sung by Janet Baker
  • Beethoven’s Bagatelles (selection of)
  • Mozart’s Vedrai carino from Don Giovanni
  • Gerald Finzi’s In Terra Pax
  • an exceprt from Verdi’s Aida
  • the wonderful Fantasy in F Minor by Schubert
  • one of the songs from Four Last Songs by Strauss
  • and we finished with part of The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

So a fine end to the first half of the season and we wish all our readers a happy Christmas.

The new season starts off on February 2 with a fascinating presentation by Frida Backman of the Backman Trio who will be taking us through the process of making a CD from rehearsal to the finished thing.  We look forward to seeing you then.  Details of where we are on the home page.  Please check back here nearer the time for any change to the arrangements.

A decade of genius

Our view of a piece of music can sometimes be clouded by our belief of when it was composed.  Somehow, we expect music in the nineteenth century to be romantic and in the twentieth, modern.  So if we hear a piece that seems ‘out of its time’ we might in some way find it hard to accept.  It was these reflections which led Anthony Powell last night to present a programme of music which was all composed at broadly the same time.  What was striking was how different and varied the pieces were: if asked one might have thought half a century spanned their compositions when in fact it was around a decade.  Truly, a dance to the music of (short) time.

Janacek
Janacek

He started with the overture to Jenufa by Janacek composed in 1894.  Janacek was rarely heard until well into this century but is now a regular fixture in concert halls and his operas, such as The Cunning Little Vixen are frequently heard.  He followed that up by an extract of the Sinfonietta arguably the most familiar of his works.

We then heard some Elgar who’s Symphonic Study, Falstaff was written only a few years after Janacek’s yet sounded an age apart.  Other pieces included the Claude Debussy’s tonal work La Mer written a year or two after Elgar yet sounding completely different.

Another contrast were two extracts from Symphonies no 3 and 5 by Nielsen.  Nielsen is being heard more and more now and his symphonic works at least get performed.  Anthony contrasted this with extracts from Mahler and in particular his Symphony no 1 written two decades earlier but sounding from an altogether different age.

A fascinating programme which illustrated well the variety of musical styles which coexisted in just over a decade.

Salisbury Journal piece: http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/community_news/11597552.Salisbury_Recorded_Music_Society/

The next meeting is based on the saxophone as an orchestral instrument and is on November 17.  If you weren’t at last nights meeting then don’t forget to bring along your favourite piece (lasting less than 10 minutes) for the Members’ evening on December 1st.