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A Williams - Symphony no.1, Chamber Concerto

£12.69

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

Label: Nimbus - Alliance

Cat No: NI6432

Barcode: 0710357643224

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 7th October 2022

Works

Williams, Adrian

Chamber Concerto: Portraits of Ned kelly
Symphony no.1

Artists

English Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Kenneth Woods

Works

Williams, Adrian

Chamber Concerto: Portraits of Ned kelly
Symphony no.1

Artists

English Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Kenneth Woods

About

“My first symphony began its life during the spring of 2018 following a request from Kenneth Woods for a work for the English Symphony Orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project. The basic score was completed towards the end of the following year but continued to undergo quite a few changes almost until its recording in December 2021. The symphony, which is dedicated to Kenneth Woods ‘for giving me hope’ is one of my largest-scale pieces. am hugely grateful to Ken Woods and the ESO for their tremendous dedication, and to the generosity of the Steven R Gerber Trust in the USA for their sponsorship of this performance.” – Adrian Williams

“This remarkable work is one of two by Williams to grow from his friendship with the great Australian painter, Sidney Nolan. Nolan and Williams were neighbours in the Welsh Borders region that Williams has called home for most of the last forty years. Williams, a prolific pianist, was given the invitation to use the piano at The Rodd, Nolan’s house in northwest Herefordshire and now the home of the Sidney Nolan Trust. The Chamber Concerto is a musical response to Nolan’s most famous series of paintings, which depict scenes from the wild life of Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, an outlaw, gang leader and convicted policemurderer who rampaged across Australia in the years prior to his arrest and execution in 1880. Williams’ music almost always has a virtuosic edge to it, but the demands placed on the musicians in this work are truly extraordinary, yet it is incredibly rewarding to play. In this sense, Williams’ designation of the work as a concerto is both telling and apt is it demands that everyone in the ensemble contributes their utmost in rhythmic precision, agility, accuracy in extremes of register and lyrical storytelling.” – Kenneth Woods

In 2016 Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra launched their 21st Century Symphony Project, an ambitious multiyear effort to commission premiere and record nine new symphonies by leading composers, with the triumphant premiere of Philip Sawyers’s Third Symphony at St John’s Smith Square. In 2018, the Project continued with the premiere of David Matthews’s Ninth Symphony, selected by The Spectator as one of the Top Ten Classical Events of the year. The most recent work in the series is Matthew Taylor’s Fifth Symphony hailed by ClassicalSource as “a masterpiece” at its 2019 premiere.