Grażyna Bacewicz - Music for String Orchestra (Ronald Corp)

Information

Composer: Grażyna Bacewicz

• Concerto for String Orchestra
• Sinfonietta for String Orchestra
• Symphony for String Orchestra
• Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion

New London Orchestra

Ronald Corp, conductor

Date: 2009

Label: Hyperion

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Review

Here is another centenary-celebrating Bacewicz disc, to set beside the recent release of her violin concertos (Chandos, A/09): it is a thoroughly rewarding survey of a composer who deserves to be much better known.

The Sinfonietta (1935) reveals a lively, characterful style that not only evokes the Paris-based Martinù but suggests affinities with Bacewicz's fellow Boulanger-pupil Lennox Berkeley and even with the warmly expressive counterpoints of Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra, written four years later. Grim wartime experiences might account for the fact that the Symphony (1946) is weightier, more earnest and possibly too busy and dense at times, although Bacewicz's ability to introduce strong contrasts without disrupting deeper continuity remains impressive.

Two years further on, and the Concerto for String Orchestra manages a striking balance between energetic propulsion and a more elegiac, eloquent spirit, with concise forms incorporating striking interactions between solo and tutti lines. Another 10 years, and Bacewicz was in the thick of a cultural upheaval that saw music in Poland facing new challenges and new opportunities. Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion is far more than an anarchic gesture of dissent, digging deep into a heritage that seems rooted in The Rite of Spring and other more recent radical forays yet never lapsing into mere imitation. This is music of lament and even of protest, but it has a positive spirit concerned to communicate no less urgently and distinctively than the composer's more "orthodox" earlier pieces.

Ronald Corp and his New London Orchestra are generally persuasive in what is often quite tricky instrumental writing: the recording is fine.

— Arnold Whittall

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Grażyna Bacewicz (5 February 1909 – 17 January 1969) was a Polish composer and violinist of Lithuanian origin. Educated in Łódź, Warsaw and Paris, she studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and Nadia Boulanger and violin with prominent teachers including Carl Flesch. She achieved early recognition as a performer and later devoted herself primarily to composition and teaching. Bacewicz produced a substantial body of neoclassical music, with particular emphasis on violin and string repertoire, including seven violin concertos and seven string quartets. Her works received numerous international and national awards.

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Ronald Corp (born 4 January 1951) is a composer, conductor and Anglican priest. He was born and grew up in Wells, Somerset, later studying music at Oxford University. Corp began conducting full-time in 1988 when he founded the New London Orchestra and New London Children’s Choir. With the Orchestra he has appeared in all the main London venues and at major festivals around the country. The Orchestra has a gained an excellent reputation for its innovative programming and for its acclaimed recordings on Hyperion. Corp is also a composer and n expert in choral training and choral repertory.

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