The London Symphony Orchestra (Pappano) - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - Symphony No. 10 (2014) {B&W Society of Sound} [24/96]
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time ~ 42 minutes | 950 MB
© 2012 LSO | Official Digital Download - Source: bowers-wilkins.com | front & back cover
genre: Classical, Symphony, Orchestral
The Symphony No
10 was comissioned and premiered by the LSO in February 2014 to mark
the eightieth birthday of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Newly-commissioned
works are a step into the unknown for composer and commissioner alike.
Sometimes remarkable works are born, and sometimes not. But no-one could
possibly have guessed in what circumstances the Symphony No 10 would
come to be written.
The work’s relationship with mortality is a curious one, completed as it
was against the severe odds of the composer’s life-threatening illness
during 2013. The sheer determination of Maxwell Davies to finish the
symphony, after an unexpected diagnosis and during gruelling treatment,
is extraordinary in itself. By a strange coincidence, the composer had
already chosen to write a work bound up with the life and death of an
artist.
The inspiration for the Symphony No 10 is the seventeenth century
Italian architect Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), whose architecture
has fascinated Maxwell Davies since his own studies in Italy in the late
fifties. The piece explores the concept of sound as architecture, not
unlike Borromini’s own preoccupation with ‘form, volume and light’. Its
divine spark, however, is Borromini’s ‘last testament’, an extraordinary
text written as the architect met his slow end following a suicide
attempt. After a lifetime of public criticism, the baroque genius takes
his own life, committing his extraordinary reflections to paper in the
two days it takes him to die. The text is used in the closing movement
of the symphony, which is scored for orchestra, baritone and chorus.
The tenth
symphony’s genesis and ambition takes it far beyond any notion of
programmatic music. The close relationship of the subject matter to the
composer’s own experience and artistic preoccupations has resulted in a
dramatic work of art, and one whose technical assurance mirrors
Borromini’s own.
Symphony No 10 could have no more persuasive advocate than Sir Antonio
Pappano, a conductor with his own links to Italy and its artistic
traditions. He is clearly enriched by his collaboration with the
composer and the LSO gives a fantastic performance full of the drama,
light and shade demanded by the score. Giving a voice to the rage of the
dying architect, the baritone Markus Butter is outstanding. |
tracklist:
01 - Symphony No 10 Part 1 - Adagio
02 - Symphony No 10 Part 2 - Allegro
03 - Symphony No 10 Part 3 - Presto
04 - Symphony No 10 Part 4 - Adagio
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