CYRIL SCOTT

The Violin Concerto and Festival Overture receive their premiere recording

It features the internationally renowned violinist Olivier Charlier.

Performed by the 2007 three times ‘Grammy’-nominated orchestra, the BBC Phiharmonic

In the third volume of the orchestral works of Cyril Scott, Martyn Brabbins and BBC Philharmonic take us further on the journey of this unique composer’s musical landscape. Although an English composer, Scott studied composition in Frankfurt at the Hock Conservatoire, and became part of the ‘Frankfurt Gang’, which included Percy Grainger and Roger Quilter. Scott, however, eventually went his own way having absorbed a Germanic view of musical culture during these impressionable years. Far ahead of his time in many ways Scott was one of the more remarkable men of his generation. As John Ireland his friend and contemporary wrote to Scott ‘You were the first British composer to write music which was non-academic, free and individual in style and of primary significance.’

Scott was enormously active in his late teens and his twenties, and many works conceived then were revised over a lifetime, not achieving their final form until much later. Three of these are featured on our programme. These include the broodingly dark Violin Concerto, strongly influenced by Stravinsky and Bartók, performed by Olivier Charlier who brilliantly spins the expressive rhapsodic line and burgeoning melody. This is coupled with the exquisitely atmospheric tone poem Festival Overture for which Scott won the Daily Telegraph orchestral competition in 1933, and Three Symphonic Dances, Op. 22. Scott’s earlier works have tended to be eclipsed by his later works; and at the expense of his large orchestral scores - but these great works now receive the attention they deserve.

Scott is undoubtedly an extraordinary example of a once leading figure, writing in an apparently advanced idiom early on; who increasingly became persona non-grata with the musical establishment and the established idioms of the day in the inter-war years. This exploratory series has begun to rectify this, and this third volume is sure to inspire further converts.

"These are all most persuasive performances ... superbly played."

The Penguin Guide - 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings 2011-12

If you like Szymanowski’s violin concertos (composed in 1916 and 1932), you’ll be drawn to Scott’s, especially in this warm. Lingering, airy performance where the dark orchestral colours comer through clearly; its treble textures are transparent as well. Charlier caresses the piece with atmospheric touches of rubato as Brabbins elicits superb playing from the orchestra.
Brabbins directs sympathetic and characterful performances.., well worth any British music-lovers time.
This release represents a remarkable discovery in 20th-century British music: excellent recording, too.
These are again fine performances and recordings
For anyone so far unfamiliar with Scott’s music, this current issue would be an ideal place to start. The performances seem exemplary, the superb BBC Philharmonic convinced and convincing under Martyn Brabbins’s expert guidance. The recording quality is equally top-drawer in its focus and space and in faithfully capturing every detail, subtlety and dynamic.
The latest instalment from Chandos continues to acquaint us with sadly unfamiliar delights – especially Scott’s one-movement Violin Concerto, forgotten since the 1029s… Definitely recommended.
If anything, Martyn Brabbins seems to have acquired the measure oft his music even more convincingly that his two previous recordings of the Third and Fourth Symphonies. Violin soloist Olivier Charlier offers a very penetrating account of the concerto’s non-virtuosic subtleties. And what can one add in praise of Chandos’ state-of-the-art sonics?…this disc is worth engaging and revisiting many times over.

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