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

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS

Doreen CARWITHEN (1922-2003)
Men of Sherwood Forest - overture (1954) [4:16]
Boys in Brown - suite (1949) [9:13]
To the Public Danger - Prelude and Apotheosis (1948) [3:24]
East Anglian Holiday (1954) [15:32]
Mantrap - suite (1953) [13:35]
Three Cases of Murder - suite (1953) [12:35]
Travel Royal - suite (1952) [8:41]
BBC Concert Orchestra/Gavin Sutherland
rec. Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, 29-30 Nov 2010.
world premiere recordings
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7266 [61:31]

Experience Classicsonline

Doreen Carwithen has two fine CDs on Chandos presenting her chamber works (CHAN9596) and the concert orchestral music (CHAN9524).

This disc is more than ably annotated by Alwyn authority Andrew Knowles and his notes run to ten pages - English only. It furnishes collectors with just over an hour's slice of Carwithen's film music. She was one of the host of composers who stoked the musical boilers of the British film industry in the late 1940s and into the 1950s.

The Sherwood Forest overture is fluently regal with pastoral interludes. The music for the Boys in Brown is tense and bright-eyed yet not overly ‘psychological’. To the Public Danger is a short-angst ridden piece of surging panic. It has an athleticism that shouts Constant Lambert. East Anglian Holiday was a score written for British Transport Films. It is, as expected, a sighingly pastoral piece with many homely touches including church bells. It is, as Knowles writes, a continuous pastoral tone-poem running to approaching 16 minutes. The writing is undemandingly smooth in an idiom not far removed from Vaughan Williams In the Fen Country or Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 or Butterworth in the English Idylls.

With the Mantrap suite we return to the pressurised psychological style. It is associated with a plot that entails an allegedly insane murderer who escapes from his asylum with a view to proving his innocence. There is some countryside poesy coming as remission from all this angst. That said, jaggedly torturous emotions - usually voiced by the trumpets - are never that far distant. Three Cases of Murder was a 1953 film which tells three murder stories one after the other. The music tracks through a big ‘main titles’ violin theme seguing into rage and then tension. The last movement Reception at the Connemaras put me in mind of the stately ball room music by Bernard Herrmann for The Magnificent Ambersons except that this is specifically in the English country house aristocratic manner. The last score represented is the single-tracked Travel Royal suite. This nine minute continuous piece is masterfully broad. It was written for BOAC and radiates 1950s confidence. The sumptuous score blends in Oranges and Lemons, Greensleeves and John Peel for this travelogue.

There's some really fine music here, low on challenge but high on confidence or 1950s super-complacency.

Rob Barnett


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 


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.