Disc Details

Contents

Work Title	Composer
Partita	Richard Rodney Bennett	Listen
Reflections on a 16th-Century Tune	Richard Rodney Bennett	Listen
Reflections on a Scottish Folk Song	Richard Rodney Bennett	Listen
Songs before Sleep	Richard Rodney Bennett

Reviews

• [Partita is] strongly individual, and undoubtedly reflects Bennett's many years of US residence. [...] Reflections on a Sixteenth Century Tune from four years later takes a melody by Josquin des Pres and fashions from it an unpretentiously attractive variation-based composition.
  Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine, 01 January 2007
• Richard Rodney Bennett set out to write a work that was 'full of tunes' in memory of his friend Sheila McCrindle (head of promotion at Chester Music) and the result, composed in the summer of 1995, is the utterly delightful Partita which opens this superb new disc - encouragingly billed as Volume 1 of a series of Bennett's orchestral works. The Partita is written in Bennett's most accessible and instantly engaging style, not only full of melody but also beautifully crafted and obstinately memorable (try the swaying second idea of the 'Intrada' on track 1 at 1'25"). The slow movement is a lyrical lullaby and the finale is bracing and rhythmically exciting. This is a piece that ought to be in the repertoire of any enterprising orchestra that is looking for something immediately enjoyable, incredibly well written and full of energy. The confident and ardent performance by the Philharmonia under Richard Hickox is everything one could wish for.
  The good news continues with Reflections on a Sixteenth-Century Tune for string orchestra, written in 1999...I know how immensely gratifying his music is to perform, and Reflections is a very fine piece...Songs Before Sleep is a cycle for baritone and strings drawing its texts from Iona and Peter Opie's Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes. This is charming and inventive music: it's a bold composer who writes a new tune for Twinkle. Twinkle, Little Star, but Bennett has produced quite a lovely setting here. These songs were originally for voice and piano, but Bennett quickly made a version for string orchestra and that is what we have here, sung by the dedicatee, Jonathan Lemalu...The most recent work here is Reflections on a Scottish Folk Song for cello and string orchestra, written in memory of the Queen Mother in 2004. The melody is Ca' The Yows to the Knowes, much arranged by earlier composers (notable Tippett), but here given a tender and rhapsodic tratment that is enormously touching...This is a release I recomment with the greatest enthusiasm to anyone with an interest in British music, and I greatly look forward to further releases in the series. A winner.
  Nigel Simeone, International Record Review, 01 December 2006
• Bennett doesn't disappoint his fans; the Scottish Folk Song piece feels effortlessly resourceful and displays some cogently turned orchestration, while a pot-boiler Partita perches itself between Walton and early Tippett
  Philip Clark, Classic fm Magazine