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Adam Walker, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner – Nielsen: Flute Concerto, Symphony No. 3, Pan and Syrinx (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:52 minutes | 756 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos Records
For this second instalment in their Nielsen cycle, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by the flautist Adam Walker for a programme that combines the Flute Concerto, the Third Symphony, and the tone poem Pan and Syrinx. Nielsen began work on the Third Symphony in 1910, some seven years after he had completed his second symphony ‘The Four Temperaments’, and the work was premièred in Copenhagen in 1912. In his album note, Paul Griffiths describes the work’s eventual title, ‘Sinfonia espansiva’ as a fifth temperament – Joviality. In the second movement, uniquely in his symphonic output, Nielsen calls for (wordless) voices – solo soprano and baritone. It was also the first of his symphonies to be commercially released on record – Erik Tuxen conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Composed in 1926, the Flute Concerto is a late work, and demonstrates Nielsen’s stylistic evolution towards the new modernism. The soloist engages in repeated interactions with other instruments within the orchestra, most notably the clarinet and the bass trombone. Pan and Syrinx dates from 1918, and is based on the ancient legend which tells how the amorous god Pan invented the pan flute whilst pursuing the nymph Syrinx.
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Sinfonia Of London, John Wilson, Adam Walker – Kenneth Fuchs: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:16 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
The Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three canvasses by Helen Frankenthaler: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968) – not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power. The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra, is a revision of a chamber work which Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Adam Walker, BBC Philharmonic & Yan Pascal Tortelier – Pierre Sancan: A Musical Tribute (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:21 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Pierre Sancan was a tremendously influential figure in French musical life, as a composer, pianist, teacher, and conductor, but remains relatively unknown outside France. Born in Mazamet, in 1916 – the same year as Dutilleux – he received his early musical training in Morocco and, later, Toulouse. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1934 where he studied with Jean Gallon, conducting with Charles Munch and Roger Désormière, piano with Yves Nat, and composition with Henri Busser. He won the Prix de Rome in 1943, and eventually joined the staff in 1956, teaching there until his retirement, in 1985. A list of his piano students reads like a who’s who of French pianists and includes Michel Béroff, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Daniel Varsano, Jacques Rouvier, Jean-Philippe Collard, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Yan Pascal Tortelier, whilst not a direct student of Sancan, attended the Paris Conservatoire while he taught there, and remembers his influence: ‘of course through his extraordinary pianistic imagination but even more so by his physical allure and overwhelming personality’. This programme of the Piano Concerto, orchestral works, works for solo piano, and the flute Sonatine (played by Adam Walker) serves as a personal tribute to Sancan from both pianist and conductor, who very much hope that it will help to raise awareness of this gifted composer and his music.
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Adam Walker & Huw Watkins – Shadow Dances, British Works for Flute (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:26 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging programme.
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Adam Walker, Timothy Ridout, James Baillieu – French Works for Flute (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:01 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
French Works for Flute is the Chandos début of Adam Walker, ably accompanied by James Baillieu. The pair is joined by the violist Timothy Ridout in Duruflé’s Prélude, récitatif et variations. At the forefront of a new generation of wind soloists, Adam Walker was appointed principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2009 at the age of twenty-one. Built around three major works (Widor’s Suite, Jean-Pierre Rampal’s edition of Franck’s Violin Sonata, and Duruflé’s flute trio), the programme proves an excellent showcase for Walker’s prodigious talent – effortless virtuosity, ethereal sound, and above all outstanding musical expression.
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