Malcolm Williamson Chamber Music Vol 1 (Release date first quarter 2025 tbc)
Antony Gray (piano), members of the St Paul’s Sinfonia, Matt Scott Rogers (conductor), selected soloists and ensemble players.
In 2025 Divine Art will release the first volume in a series featuring the chamber music of Sir Malcolm Williamson, 50 years since the composer’s appointment as Master of The Queen’s Music in 1975.
Here is your chance to decide for yourselves whether Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003) has been unjustly neglected. (We think so!) From being someone at the heart of the British musical establishment, including being Master of the Queen’s Music on the recommendation of Benjamin Britten, despite his somewhat anti-establishment views and behaviour, the last thirty years or so have seen an almost complete absence of Williamson from the concert platform and the recording studio, with very few exceptions.
One problem, perhaps more so historically than would be the case today, is that Williamson is almost impossible to pin down stylistically. He could write tuneful children’s operas, bouncy religious music and grand operas with tuneful arias and habaneras, and at the same time serial music of sometimes great dissonance and complexity (which, however, never lacked a lyrical element). This stylistic diversity was too much for some in the establishment, who liked to know what they were dealing with. Williamson responded to these people with characteristic glee and wit!
Antony Gray and Malcolm Williamson
All these stylistic means of expression are represented on the present disc. From the ascetic beauty of ‘Pietà’, a twenty-minute Adagio, to the boisterous, and frankly hysterical finale of the uniquely scored Concerto for Wind Quintet and two pianos-eight hands, it’s all here. There’s some extraordinary writing for six trumpets, including a bass, with two pianos and percussion, the score of which was discovered in 2023. There is an early clarinet trio, also rediscovered in 2023, having also been previously rediscovered then re-lost in 1990 (there’s a story there!) and finally a quintet for piano and wind, the only piece on the disc to have previously been commercially recorded.
The performers include regular Divine Artist, pianist Antony Gray (also the producer), members of the St Paul’s Sinfonia and a selected group of skilled instrumentalists.
Williamson is, in fact, a major composer of the twentieth century. His operas and seven symphonies should be programmed regularly, along with the rest of his considerable output, and we hope the present recording will go some way to furthering that goal.
Album details:
Label: Divine Art
Catalogue number: DDX 21220
Title: Malcolm Williamson Chamber Music, Volume 1
Works:
Concerto for Two Pianos (8 Hands) and Wind Quintet
Pas de Quatre for Wind Quartet and Piano
Pietà, for mezzo-soprano, oboe, bassoon and piano
Trio for clarinet, cello and piano
Study/Piece for solo horn
3 Vocalises for clarinet and piano
Gallery for 6 trumpets, 2 pianos and percussion
Artists:
Antony Gray (piano)
Sally Lundgren (mezzo-soprano)
Sarah O’Flynn (flute)
Melanie Ragge (oboe)
Neyire Ashworth (clarinet)
Meyrick Alexander (bassoon)
Roger Montgomery (horn)
Joely Koos (cello)
Joe Howson, Iain Clarke & Hamish Brown (pianos)
Members of St Paul’s Sinfonia:
Simon Tong (Trumpet in D)
David Carnac (bass trumpet)
Laura Garwin (trumpet)
Richard Knights (trumpet)
Thomas Hewitt (trumpet)
Samuel Ewins (trumpet)
Jon French (percussion)
Matt Scott Rogers (conductor)
Recorded in January and February 2024 in London. For release in the first quarter of 2025.
Divine Art Records is to issue in the spring of 2023 the first recording of the African-inspired 75-movement, 3-hour Afrikosmos by long-established South African composer Michael Blake. The recording was made in June 2021 at the Menuhin Hall, Cobham, Surrey by pianist Antony Gray, whose recent Divine Art albums of piano works by Saint-Saëns have met with great success and glowing reviews.
The composer writes:
“The idea of writing an African response to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos has a long genesis. I first approached it in 2003 with a tiny piece for young players called iKos’tina, commissioned by the ABRSM for Thalia Myers’ Spectrum series. Béla Bartók composed his Mikrokosmos initially to teach the piano to his son Peter, and so it includes pieces for beginners through to more advanced students and concert pianists, with most of the pieces drawing on Eastern European folk music. I followed his format of six volumes, each one roughly following a similar format, with one or two pieces that fall into each of the following genres: studies, pieces focusing on rhythm and texture, character pieces, dances, pieces exploring a mode or scale, folksong arrangements and variations, transcriptions and homages. Just as Bartók wanted to represent a small world, or the “world of the little ones, the children”, so I wanted to represent as broad a picture as possible of African music and my own heritage.
I wanted to explore in as comprehensive a way possible the vast range of traditional music from sub-Saharan Africa. While a few pieces are piano transcriptions of existing music, most pieces are written in a neo-African style, reflecting my own compositional aesthetic which has drawn on African musical material and aesthetics since the mid-1970s. Throughout I tried to write music which doesn’t patronise or ‘write down’ to young players, however simple the music may be. The pieces use African five and six note scales, harmonies based on the overtone series, polyrhythm, interlocking, cyclic form, etc. And there are also pieces which are cutups or collages of existing music, some which use graphic notation, or are played directly on the strings, and some in which the pianist has to whistle or click their fingers as percussive accompaniment.
The support of the Rockefeller Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. A residency at the Rockefeller Writers Centre, Bellagio, in June 2015, provided the initial impetus for this project and I completed the project five years later in June 2020. In August 2021 Antony Gray premiered most of the pieces in a three-part soirée in Le Genesteix in the salon of Stephen Pettitt, near my home in France. The scores were published in 2022 by Bardic Edition. The pieces are dedicated to friends, colleagues, former students, and some who have passed.”
Michael Blake, South African born composer and pianist, was based in London from 1977, returning to the ‘New South Africa’ twenty years later. Apart from teaching composition at several universities, he was responsible for a number of post-apartheid New Music initiatives – including joining the ISCM, and setting up a new music festival and composers meeting – which aimed to improve the status of composition after the divisive years of apartheid. His musical language is partly the result of an immersion in the materials and playing techniques of African music, but also drawing on virtually any found material, and is influenced by both experimental film and African weaving techniques. His works have been widely played, in Toronto, New York, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, and throughout Europe and Africa, and now appears on some 15 CDs. Since 2015 he has lived in rural France with his wife, musicologist and writer Christine Lucia, and their Breton spaniel Dollie, but spends part of each year in Cape Town, where he is honorary professor of experimental composition in the Africa Open Institute at Stellenbosch University.
The Australian pianist, Antony Gray was educated in Victoria, Australia. He graduated from the Victorian College of Arts where he studied with Roy Shepherd and Stephen McIntyre, winning several awards and prizes, including the Allans Keyboard Award two years running. In 1982 he received a scholarship from the Astra foundation to continue his studies in London with Joyce Rathbone and Geoffrey Parsons.
Based now in London, he has long been regarded as one of the most interesting and communicative performers of his generation. His career to date has encompassed solo and chamber music performances around the world, as well as regular recordings for CD and radio. He has been a (selective) champion of contemporary music and has premiered many pieces written for him. He has also championed many neglected composers such as George Enescu, Dussek and Martinu. From his time at College he has been a champion of many living composers, and his work with Australian composers Malcolm Williamson and John Carmichael has been particularly productive.
Antony Gray was one of ABC Classics’ most prolific recording artists, having recorded fourteen discs of solo piano music for the label, as well as featuring on a recital disc for KNS Classical and a number of other recording projects. Recordings already released are the complete solo piano works of Eugene Goossens, Malcolm Williamson (this recording has been included in a recent survey of 1001 recordings to hear before you die) and John Carmichael, as well as the late piano pieces of Johannes Brahms, a 3 disc set of Bach transcriptions, including several written specially for the recording, and a 5 disc set of the complete piano works of Francis Poulenc, including a number of works recorded for the first time, all on ABC Classics.
Album Details
Title: Afrikosmos Composer: Michael Blake Performer: Antony Gray (piano) Label: Divine Art Catalogue number: DDA 21374 (3 CD set/triple digital album)
Track List:
Lullaby to Comfort a Child / Stickfighting Song / Interlocking Hands / Sefapanosaurus / Distant Cowbells / Herding Song/ Geyser off! Hat on! / Fifths/ You are a real rascal/ Slow Dance / In the Hexatonic Mode / Wedding Song/ Ntsikana’s Bell / Reflection (Homage to Erik Satie) / Stroll to the Spaza Shop (Homage to Stanley Glasser) / Canon at the Octave / Five Finger Patterns / Ostinato with Cross-rhythms / Call and Response/ Four-note Patterns / Threshing Song / Lusikiski / Variations on 4ths and 5ths / In Goema Style / Latshon’ilang / There Cried a Hippo / Song for the Evening / Haiku / March (Homage to Stefan Wolpe) / Spotted Dikkop and Black Cuckoo / Smoke and Mirrors / Supermoon (Homage to Henry Cowell) / Lebombo Bone / iKos’tina / Stay on path / Thirds / Tickey-draai / Two Modes Interlocking / Variations on a Flute Tune / John Knox Bokwe’s ‘Plea for Africa’ / Postcards from South Africa / African Doves (Homage to Messiaen) / Keep left, pass right / If I had wings I could fly / High Fives / Emerging Melody / Scents of Childhood 1 (Homage to Schumann) / Self Delectative Song / Seventh must Fall / Chaconne in Mbaqanga Style / Patterns in a Heptatonic Field / Weave / Da kom die Alibama / Message from the Nduna (Homage to György Kurtág) / The Seven Steps / Linong tsa lesiba / Une Sonnerie pour G.D. / Chorale (Homage to MMM) / Scents of Childhood 2 (Homage to Schumann) / Walking Song (Homage to Percy Grainger) / Changing Times with Repeating Patterns / Reedpipe Dance / Major-Minor / Unevensong / Ituri Rain Forest (Homage to JSB) / The music flows jolly as it won’t stop forever / Heaven’s Bow / Night Music / Giyani / Scents of Childhood 3 (Homage to Schumann and Puccini) / Diary of a Dung Beetle / Freedom Day Variation / Lyric Piece (Homage to Grieg) / Broken Line / Dance in Seakhi Rhythm (Homage to Bartók and JP Mohapeloa)
Divine Art Records adds to its roster of new releases for the first quarter of 2023 with a collection of superb and approachable music by Australian composer John Carmichael, whose overall style can perhaps best be described as neo-Romantic, and which will appeal to a wide audience which may not be keen on the more avant-garde new music. His Piano Concerto, while being totally original, carries definite echoes of Rachmaninov.
John Carmichael was born 1930 in Melbourne, Australia. He studied piano and composition at the University Conservatorium there, followed by two years piano studies with Marcel Ciampi at the Conservatoire National in Paris. Further composition studies followed with Arthur Benjamin and Anthony Milner in London while Carmichael joined the first group of musicians working for the newly established Council for Music Therapy, for whom he introduced music therapy programs at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and Netherden Mental Hospital, Surrey. In 1960 he became musical director of the Spanish Dance group Eduardo Y Navarra touring extensively with them both abroad and in Britain; foreign languages are one of his passions – the latest challenge being Chinese.
The album includes duos, solos, a Piano Concerto (exuberant pianism matched with string orchestra, with a Caribbean flavoured final movement), a Piano Trio aspiring towards the light, works designed to bring the viola, regarded by many as the Cinderella of the string instruments, into the spotlight, a Divertimento for flute, oboe, clarinet & piano; overall a varied collection of works with melodic elements being an important feature. Joining this celebration of the potential in new orchestral and chamber music are many of Britain’s most highly talented artists, including pianist Antony Gray whose recent recordings of Saint-Saëns piano music for Divine Art have attracted glowing praise and are the label’s top sellers of 2022.
Music of John Carmichael (DDA 25240)
Works and Artists:
Piano Concerto No, 2
Antony Gray (piano); St. Paul’s Sinfonia; Andrew Morley (conductor)
Piano Trio “Toward the Light”
Paul Manley (violin); Andrew Fuller (cello); Michael Dussek (piano)
Aria & Finale
Contrasts
Morgan Goff (viola); Antony Gray (piano)
Short Cuts
Susan Torke (flute); Clare Hoskins (oboe); Shelley Levy (clarinet); Antony Gray (piano)
Album duration approximately 74 minutes Recorded in London, summer 2022 Release date to be announced – around February / March 2023
