We thought it might be interesting to see what critics make of each of the pieces we are planning to play…and what they’ll say about our version.
Frostiana by Randall Thompson
Frostiana, written for the Amherst, Massachusetts, bicentennial, warms like a fireside. Frost and Thompson knew and admired one another’s work. Again, Thompson chose well – not only favorites like “The Road Not Taken.” “Stopping by Woods,” and “The Pasture,” but the relatively obscure like “The Telephone” and “A Girl’s Garden.”…Overall, the work is a miracle of inspired economy…Frost, present at the première, liked it. When the last bars of the music had died away, he shouted, “Sing that again!”
From a review of the 1998 recording by the New York Choral Society and Manhattan Chamber Orchestra under Richard Auldon Clark on classical.net
Elgar’s Enigma Variations
As a piece of scoring, quite apart from its musical content, it seems to me to be still unsurpassed by any British composer, including Elgar himself, and not by many others.
From Gramophone Magazine’s review of Andre Previn’s 1987 recording.
The first performance of Enigma Variations, conducted by Hans Richter on 19 June 1899 in London, made Elgar’s name virtually overnight as England’s finest composer since Purcell. He had come up with a unique creation – a sequence of musical portraits of his wife, his friends and himself, all based on a melody representing, as he later said, ‘the loneliness of the artist’.
From a BBC Classical Music magazine guide to the piece and its recordings.
Nell Gwyn by Edward German
Skilfully weaving folk and hymn tunes into the work, including Early One Morning, it is a terrific orchestral work that would work in many a Light Music programme.
From a CD review by the Light Music Society.
All these works at Ormskirk Music Society’s spring concert at 7.30pm on Saturday 25 March 2023 at St John the Baptist Church, Burscough, L40 4AE.
Tickets are £12 for adults, £5 (student/U18) and £25 for a family of 2 adults and up to 4 children. They are on sale now by phone (07906 129393), from society members or online. There will also be tickets available on the door.
