Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Buckfast Abbey in Devonshire dates back more than a thousand years and has a chequered history, being demolished during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and its present site was reinstated as an abbey in 1902. It has a thriving musical life with the present Abbey Choir founded in 2009 and an organ by the Italian organ builder Fratelli Ruffati, their first to be constructed in Britain, which was installed in 2017 and given its inaugural recital in 2018. Both are featured in two new discs released on the Ad Fontes label handsomely housed in handsome CD-sized hardback books lavishly illustrated in colour, with beautiful views of the Abbey and its surroundings, and with informative notes. 'Cinquième Symphonie' ★★★★ shows off the Ruffati organ's splendid sound in a 76 minute programme performed by the Abbey's own organist Charles Maxtone-Smith. The album's title is of the disc's opening wor...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Ondřej Kukal & Jiří Teml: Jan Fišer (violin), Czech Philharmonic / Jakob Hrůša, Tomáš Netopil (Animal Music CD) ★★★★★ Here's a fascinating find: two contemporary orchestral works, challenging, interesting, having direct emotional appeal and by composers who are, at least in Britain, virtually unknown. Kulak's Symphony No. 1 “With Glockenspiel”(Op. 15) (1999) has a tremendous opening full of foreboding and menace which reminded me of Nielsen at his most pugnacious. There are some amazingly deep, cavernous subterranean sounds as if Moby Dick were on the prowl in a murky ocean, accompanied by blisteringly fast timpani. Is this Captain Ahab and his ship in pursuit of the great white whale? I offer this description just to give you an idea of how dramatic, and potentially cinematic, the opening Andante Spiritoso movement is. The tinkling glockenspiel makes a consolatory, calm-after-the-storm entrance right at the end....