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             


CD REVIEW
RECORDING OF THE MONTH


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

alternatively AmazonUK

 

Eric COATES (1886-1957)
Sound and Vision

Music for Orchestra
Sound and Vision (ATV March) (1955) [3:28]
From the Countryside - suite (1915) [12:01]
Holborn (March) (1950) [4:07]
Moresque (Dance Interlude) (1921) [3:54]
Four Ways (Suite) (1928) [16:38]
Valse from The Three Bears (Phantasy) (1926) [2:44]
The Eighth Army (March) (1942) [2:52]
Music for Voice and Orchestra
The Mill O'Dreams (song-cycle) (1915) [7:35]
Song of Summer (1943) [2:46]
Your Name (1938) [1:45]
Green Hills of Somerset (1916) [2:22]
I Heard You Singing (1923) [2:48]
The Fairy Tales of Ireland (1918) [3:27]
Bird Songs at Eventide (1926) [2:53]
Richard Edgar-Wilson (tenor)
Thomas Allen (baritone)
BBC Concert Orchestra/John Wilson
rec. Colosseum, Town Hall, Watford, 16, 18-19 July, 19 September 2007. DDD
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7198 [71:03]

 

Experience Classicsonline


Coatesians should snap this up without delay. It fills gaps with a consummate sweep.
 

Sound and Vision concisely sums up Coates’ gift for cock-a-whoop flat-cap jauntiness. There’s even a doff of the ‘titfer’ to Sousa. Compare this with a Coates war-work in the shape of The Eighth Army march. This has the swagger of the common man and rises to magniloquent brass oratory. The pick of the bunch is the cheeky-chattering Holborn March I with clattering polished brogues and a nobilmente lyric. These three are late works with the Coates accent fully formed. They contrast with the more Edward German-indebted From the Countryside. The suite’s finale At the Fair is a typically Mummerset and Morris Dancers romp with nods to Harty’s Irish Symphony and Balfour Gardiner’s Shepherd Fennel. Moresque looks to the exotic Hispano-Moorish accent with plenty of local colour à la Massenet and some surprising twists; almost as many as in the even more inventive Eastern Dance from Four Ways. The four movements of the characterful Four Ways suite take their character from the points of the compass. Northwards is a frankly superb aggressive march with hints of Tchaikovsky 5, of Bax’s later Northern Ballad No. 1 and of Harty’s With The Wild Geese. The Three Bears waltz plays beguilingly with a blend of Tchaikovsky and Delius. 

The songs with orchestra include the compact and sentimental cycle The Mill O'Dreams even if the first has the contours of a Stanford song. The whole set, including the charmingly lilting The Man in the Moon, is easy to like even if the tenor here resorts to a vibrato which I find distracting. However he enunciates lucidly and with intelligence. The final song is Blue Bells which takes us into George Butterworth’s contemporary song-cycle Love Blows as the Wind Blows. The limning of the lyrical line by the horns is lovingly done. I should also mention the gorgeous sentimentality of the late song Your Name to words by Christopher Hassall; the same Hassall who provided the libretto for Bliss’s Beatitudes and Mary of Magdala, Walton’s Troilus and Cressida and Malcolm Arnold’s Song of Simeon.  Better ye are the four popular songs taken by Sir Thomas Allen even if they are mildly kitschy. Listen to how he spins the word ‘eyes’ at the end of I Heard You Singing. His voice demonstrates an oaken, finely rough-brushed tone and magnificent control. He is sparing with the very novelty accents that these songs tempt to unwise extremes from less thoughtful singers. Here is a baritone who has been blessed with a voice to die for and who has the stewardship to give generously and yet to preserve. These songs were made for him. 

The sung words are not reproduced in the booklet but they can be heard clearly. The notes are by the gifted and generous Stephen Lloyd and they match the exemplary listening experience here on offer.

Rob Barnett






 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos 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

 

 


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




Return to Review Index

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.