William Walton - Belshazzar's Feast; Crown Imperial; Orb and Sceptre

William Walton (1902-1983)

Belshazzar's Feast

Christopher Purves, Baritone

Huddersfield Choral Society, Leeds Philharmonic Chorus, Laudibus

English Northern Philharmonia

Paul Daniel, conductor

11 tracks; 49 minutes

This is a really good release from Naxos. Walton is one of those composers who get thrown around by name but no one really knows very profoundly.

Belshazzar's Feast is an oratorio for baritone, chorus and a huge orchestra with an augmented brass section. It takes as it subject the scene from the Bible in which, at Kng Belshazzar's feast, a hand appears and prophetically writes a doom-laden message on the wall. It is often compared to Orff's Carmina Burana on account of its pulsating drive and barbaric splendour. According to Naxos it is now regarded as the finest British large-scale choral work since Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, which sounds about right.

The album also includes two great marches composed for the coronations of two different British monarchs, Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre.

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Ottorino Respighi - Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies - I

Beautiful music for your beautiful ears.

I'm not sure if anyone actually follows or visits this blog, but the Mediafire files have some downloads counting, so I feel the need to explain the lack of recent uploads. I just got back to school and I'm just figuring out my timetable, as well as having a very important and possibly life-changing event coming up next week, but after that I promise I'll be back to posting regularly. If anyone's reading this, I hope your days are filled with light and beauty.

John Adams - Century Rolls

John Adams (b. 1947)

Century Rolls

Emanuel Ax, piano

5 tracks; 50 minutes

Century Rolls, for piano and orchestra (1997)

Lollapalooza, for orchestra (1995)

Slonimsky's Earbox, for orchestra (1996)

Century Rolls is a piano concerto composed by John Adams for Emmanuel Ax. It is, in my opinion, one of the best piano concertos of the second part of the 20th century. It goes from an incredibly muscular and thumping first movement to the most delicate slow movement back to a rampage through the piano in the third movement. It's really incredible and everyone needs to hear it.

The orchestral piece Lollapalooza is incredibly fun. It's built on the rhythm of the word "Lollapalooza" with a great motive in the low brass (c-c-c-long e-flat-c) and amazingly intricate asymmetrical rhythmic patterns thrown around the rest of the orchestra. It's funky rhythms and syncopation will crack all of your rhythmic pre-conceptions!

"Slonimsky's Earbox" is an orchestral work celebrating the work of musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who compiled an essential Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which has served as a foundation for a lot of modern music. This Adams' way of recognizing Slonimsky, using a lot of the patterns found in his thesaurus with his usual rhythmic drive and intensity.

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Philip Glass - Naqoyqatsi

Philip Glass (b. 1937)

Naqoyqatsi, music for the film by Godfrey Reggio

Yo-Yo Ma, solo cello

I just watched this for the first time last night. I've been a huge fan of the first two films for a long time and a bigger fan of Glass's music for them, but somehow I never got around to watching this.

I'll just skip the film review and just say EVERYONE should see this trilogy. It's beautiful, it's rousing and it's terrifying, and absolutely worth your time.

Glass delivers more glassy goodness on this score but adding the voice of the solo cello, which is something that has proved extremely fruitful for Glass recently, and it takes the score to new heights of beauty. I thought the music was good but not as great as the other two scores as I was watching it, but it has that strange power of growing of you and I'm completely in love with it. In just one day!

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