Your Online Shop for Classical Music

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the CD 20TH CENTURY STRING MUSIC

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

Special Offers

NaxosDirect Audio

Other Genres:

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Classic Fiction, Modern Classics & Contemporary Fiction
        Classical Music Audio Books
        Drama
        Junior Classics and Children's Favourites
        Non-Fiction
        Poetry
        Samplers
        Shakespeare

Blues Legends

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

BSO on NaxosDirect

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Opera DVD
        Pop/Rock Concert
        Pop/Rock Documentary

Gospel Legends

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Books
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos Instrumental
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Samplers
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

Nostalgia

Other Genres

SACD

We Recommend….

Essential listening

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Vocal (World)
        World

Subscribe to Newsletters

Top 40 Bestselling Naxos CDs

Critics' Choice

Labels
Composer/ Authors
Conductors
Ensembles
Orchestras
Choirs
Artists
Instruments
Producers

SecurityMetrics for PCI Compliance, QSA, IDS, Penetration Testing, Forensics, and Vulnerability Assessment

20TH CENTURY STRING MUSIC

Home

Classical Music

Orchestral

View large image

Total playing time: 00:58:45

£6.99
£4.99 (CD)

In Stock - Usually ships within 48 hours.

Link to this CD Link to this page

Bela Bartok (1881 - 1945)

Divertimento, Sz 113

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976)

Simple Symphony, Op. 4

William Walton (1902 - 1983)

Two Pieces for Strings from the film music for Henry V

Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)

Concerto in D Major

The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was born in 1881. His father, director of an agricultural college, was a keen amateur musician, while it was from his mother that he received his early piano lessons. The death of his father in 1889 led to a less settled existence, as his mother resumed work as a teacher, eventually settling in the Slovak capital of Bratislava (the Hungarian Pozsony), where Bartok passed his early adolescence, counting among his school- fellows the composer Erno Dohnanyi. Offered the chance of musical training in Vienna, like Dohnanyi he chose instead Budapest, where he won a considerable reputation as a pianist, being appointed to the teaching staff of the Academy of Music in 1907. At the same time he developed a deep interest, shared with his compatriot Zoltan Kodaly, in the folk-music of his own and adjacent countries, later extended as far as Anatolia, where he collaborated in research with the Turkish composer Adnan Saygün. He acquired a considerable reputation abroad, particularly among those with an interest in contemporary music, although acceptance at home proved more grudging. Dissatisfaction at the growing association between the Hungarian government of Admiral Horthy and National Socialist Germany, led him in 1940 to emigrate to the United States of America, where he died in 1945, after a briefly held series of teaching appointments and a small but important number of major compositions.

Bartok's Divertimento for string orchestra was written in 1939 in response to a commission from Paul Sacher, founder and conductor of the Basle Chamber Orchestra (Basler Kammerorchester). Bartok had first met Sacher in 1929, and had already written for him the Music for Strings. Percussion and Celesta and his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The Divertimento has something of classical structure about it, with a sonata-allegro first movement, a four section slow movement, with the first section finally recurring, and a final movement that is, formally, a rondo. Texturally Bartok makes use of the Baroque concert grosso. The first movement opens with a first subject stated by the first violins over the repeated chords of the rest of the orchestra. A secondary element alternates between solo instruments and the whole orchestra, before the second subject proper, introduced by loud syncopated octaves, and a development that includes canonic writing. Muted lower strings provide the accompanying figuration at the start of the Adagio, with a second violin theme, the opening figure of which assumes importance. The violas provide a strong opening to the second section, with a third section over an ostinato accompaniment in fourths and fifths. The last movement opens with a statement of the principal subject, continuing to contrast the solo string quartet with the whole orchestra. There is a central fugato section and a quasi-improvisatory violin cadenza, before a reworking of the earlier material, now diverted into other musical channels.

Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony is testimony to his precocious ability as a child. The work itself was written in 1934, when the composer was twenty, but makes use of thematic material written before he was twelve. The movement titles hint at an element of satire, in what has proved an attractive work, available to competent amateurs as to professional string orchestras. Born in Lowestoft in 1913, Britten went through the customary English education of private and public school, before continuing his professional musical raining, already begun privately with Frank Bridge, at the rather less satisfactory Royal College of Music. His marked ability, facility as a composer, and musical language that had an international as much as a national appeal, aroused jealousy, as his career developed, not least with his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, a work that soon, unlike anything else by his compatriots, entered international operatic repertoire. The Simple Symphony demonstrates a winning command of melody and a deft handling of material and string textures, making the work one of the most attractive of the string orchestra repertoire.

Each movement has a descriptive title that aptly captures its mood.

The English composer William Walton, born in Oldham in 1902 and a chorister and later student at Christ Church, Oxford, owed much of his earlier success to his friends and patrons the Sitwells, with whom he collaborated on Façade. During the course of his life he wrote a considerable quantity of film music, of which the music for Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Shakespeare's Henry V remains the best known. The film included a scene not in Shakespeare's play Henry V, although graphically described by Mistress Quickly. The death of the old drunkard Falstaff, once a boon companion of the young prince, provided Walton with the opportunity for a moving Passacaglia, a Short piece that unwinds over a repealed bass figure. Equally moving is the gentle "Touch her soft lips and part", which was written for the parting of Falstaff's companion Pistol and his landlady Mistress Quickly.

The Son of a distinguished Russian singer, Igor Stravinsky spent his childhood and adolescence either in St. Petersburg or, during the summer, at the country estates of his relatives. He studied music briefly with Rimsky-Korsakov, but first made a name for himself in Paris with commissions for the Russian ballet impresario Dyagilev. He spent the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Western Europe and in 1939 moved to the United States of America, settling finally in Hollywood. He wrote his Concerto in D in response to a commission from Paul Sacher to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of his Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1946. The work was first performed by the orchestra in Basle on 27th January 1947. In three movements, the concerto opens with a bold introduction and a movement broadly in tripartite sonata-form, leading to a slow movement Arioso in a lyrical spirit later to become familiar in Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress. The final Rondo follows without a pause, continuing, as its title proclaims, in that highly characteristic form of neo-classicism that Stravinsky had made his own, at once identifiable by its melodic contours, harmonies, rhythmic figuration and structure.

Bournemouth Sinfonietta

Since its foundation in 1968, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta has established itself as one of the most versatile chamber orchestras working in Europe today.

With a busy touring schedule of concerts across the South and West of England, elsewhere in the United Kingdom and abroad, a pioneering education and community programme and a commitment to music by living composers, the range of the orchestra's work is unparalleled. Since 1989, the Principal conductor has been the distinguished Hungarian-born pianist and conductor Tamas Vasary, who assumed the additional position of Artistic Director in 1992.

Richard Studt

Richard Studt, Director and Associate Conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, a pupil of Manoug Parikian and winner of various prizes as a student at the London Royal Academy of Music, was for some ten years a violinist and soloist with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He was subsequently concert-master of the London Symphony Orchestra and directed the London Virtuosi, the Concertante of London and his own Tate Music Group, recording with the last of these five Vivaldi concerti, two of which were, newly discovered. As a conductor he studied with Maurice Handford and received significant encouragement from Simon Rattle and from courses under Sergiu Celibidache. At the same time he continues his career as a violinist in classic repertoire on his Stradivarius instrument, the 'Dolphus', made in 1727.

Disc 1

Divertimento, Sz 113

(more info)

Performed by: Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Composed by: Bela Bartok
Conducted by: Richard Studt
Recording date: 29-30 October 1993
Produced by: Craker, Chris

I. Allegro non troppo - 09:31
II. Molto adagio - 08:06
III. Allegro assai - 07:23

Simple Symphony, Op. 4

(more info)

Performed by: Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Composed by: Benjamin Britten
Conducted by: Richard Studt
Recording date: 29-30 October 1993
Produced by: Craker, Chris

I. Boisterous Bourree - 03:11
II. Playful Pizzicato - 03:18
III. Sentimental Saraband - 06:40
IV. Frolicsome Finale - 02:57

Film music for Henry V: 2 Pieces for Strings

(more info)

Performed by: Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Composed by: William Walton
Conducted by: Richard Studt
Recording date: 29-30 October 1993
Produced by: Craker, Chris

Passacaglia: Death of Falstaff - 03:15
'Touch Her Soft Lips and Part' - 02:03

Concerto in D major

(more info)

Performed by: Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Composed by: Igor Stravinsky
Conducted by: Richard Studt
Recording date: 29-30 October 1993
Produced by: Craker, Chris

I. Vivace - 05:53
II. Arioso - 02:44
III. Rondo - 03:36

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

Sign up for our newsletter!

FREE POSTAGE AND PACKING ON ALL ITEMS

We distribute exclusively within the UK only

Subscribe to our newsletter and unlock Naxos Rewards by creating an account. Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.

Composer(s)/ Author(s):
Bartok, Bela; Britten, Benjamin; Stravinsky, Igor; Walton, William

Conductor(s):
Studt, Richard

Orchestra(s):
Bournemouth Sinfonietta

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099597920
Item Number: 8550979
Release Date: Jan 1, 2000