Carwithen: Orchestral Music

This disc, which contains the only available recordings of these tuneful and colourful works, recorded in Chandos’ warm and atmospheric sound, is now at mid-price for the first time.

Doreen Carwithen is better known as the devoted wife, Mary, of the composer William Alwyn. When Chandos brought out this CD in the mid-1990s, it revealed her to be a substantial creative personality in her own right: she emerged as a warmly communicative composer, the style of her work owing more to Walton than to her husband. Her writing is strong and purposeful, sometimes adopting syncopated rhythms and stirring melodies, and always enhanced with brilliant and inventive orchestration

It was in 1947 that Doreen Carwithen’s career took off. Her Masefield-inspired overture ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) was premiered by Sir Adrian Boult. This meaty, confident and muscular work suggests the influence of Moeran, and relates readily to the film music that formed a substantial part of her output. The other overture, Bishop Rock, was inspired by the rock in the Atlantic that marks the western-most point of mainland Britain; the music is stormy in places, gently sinister in others. The charming Suffolk Suite uses melodies originally written for a film on East Anglia. The Concerto for Piano and Strings is a most ambitious work, with powerful virtuoso writing for the piano set against rich-textured strings. A deeply melancholy slow movement, in which the piano is joined by a solo violin, leads to a strong finale which in places echoes Ireland’s Piano Concerto. Howard Shelley is the persuasive soloist, with Richard Hickox and the LSO equally convincing in their advocacy of all four works.

Carwithen: Orchestral Music

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Hickox

Howard Shelley

Blackheath Halls, London

Brian Couzens

Ralph Couzens

Richard Smoker

Orchestral & Concertos

DOREEN CARWITHEN

ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another)

Concerto for Piano and Strings*

Bishop Rock

Suffolk Suite