MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound samples and Downloads

Charles Hubert Hastings PARRY (1848-1918)
Symphony no.1 in G (1882) [45:22]
From Death to Life (1914) [18:34]
English Symphony Orchestra/William Boughton
rec. Great Hall, Birmingham University, 26-27 January 1991. DDD
NIMBUS NI 5296 [70:33]

Experience Classicsonline


 
This 1991 Nimbus disc is one of many that were originally released in the late 1980s or 1990s and which have been re-issued or at least re-distributed without obvious announcement from the label. The booklet has certainly changed, and William Boughton's biography has been updated to 2004.
 
This particluar CD hardly started an avalanche of recordings of Parry's radiant First Symphony. Within a year Chandos had released a version by the London Philharmonic under Matthias Bamert (CHAN 9062) - in fact, Chandos appear to have completed their actual recording before Nimbus. The LPO under Bamert has to date provided the only complete recording of all five Parry symphonies (CHAN 9120 - pricey, but valuable, and considerably cheaper as a download). Perhaps surprisingly, Naxos have never progressed beyond a starter volume in 1996, when Andrew Penny and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra recorded the Second (8.553469).
 
Sadly, no other recordings appear to have been made since, leaving for the First Symphony a simple choice between Boughton and Bamert. This recording is certainly a safe bet. The orchestral playing is not faultless, but it is decent enough, and Boughton gives one of his best early performances. Sound quality on early Nimbus discs was not always of the most satisfactory quality, but on this one it is fairly good - just a little muddy in the high strings.
 
Though not by any means among the greatest ever written, Parry's First Symphony was something of a pioneer in British music: if it is reminiscent of Elgar, it is as well to remember that this work preceded Elgar's First by a quarter of a century. Incredibly, Boughton's was not only the first recording of Parry's Symphony, but also the first performance of it since Parry himself heard it for the last time in 1883! What a sad indictment of 20th century musical life in the UK, to allow such glorious music to lie neglected for so long, when almost every duff ditty ever scribbled, every bum note ever crooned is indiscriminately consumed by a pop-obsessed culture.
 
The Symphony is redolent at times of Mendelssohn, Brahms and especially Schumann, all of whom Parry held in the highest esteem. Parry dedicated it to his wife, so it is hardly surprising that it is a colourful, vital, optimistic work, though not without episodes of drama and poignancy.
 
Sometimes Parry was happy to adopt the Victorian practice of giving works portentous, some might say pretentious, titles for effect. From Death to Life is not only subtitled Mors et Vitae, but its two sections have their own prophetic headings: Via Mortis and Via Vitae. No doubt, obviously, what Parry had in mind when writing this piece, and given the social and personal context - the start of the First World War and Parry's own old age, it is little wonder that turned out to be a dark, operatic work of considerable intensity. It is far from depressing, however: the second part is marked nobilmente and decidedly Elgarian in spirit. A fine companion piece to the Symphony, the two works providing the listener with a representative sample of early and late Parry.
 
The booklet notes are supplied by prolific Parry/Stanford scholar and biographer Jeremy Dibble, and are well written and informative.
 
Byzantion

See also review by Rob Barnett


Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.