Symphonic Variations on an African Air is based on an African-American song, "I'm troubled in mind." In his foreword to "Twenty-four Negro Melodies", Coleridge-Taylor states, "What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk-music, Dvorák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies. 
A message from Paul Noble: As the arranger, I want to share with the reader some of the techniques I have employed relating to the performance of the music. With 14 key changes, I have chosen to eliminate all key signatures in favor of an atonal approach. Players may be quite familiar with an F#, but less familiar with the key of F#! Pitch placement has also been an issue, with the decision to maintain it as in the original, seeing that a change of pitch would simply transfer issues without making the music more accessible. The decisions regarding enharmonics is a battle between musical integrity and technical facility. Choices have been carefully made between whether to use, for instance a B# or C, an E# or F, etc. Also, there is segmentation of technical runs, ossia options for more difficult ornamentations, and generous cueing of important solo lines. It has been my joy to make this important work available to Concert Bands around the world. PN

Symphonic Variations On An African Air - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; arr. by Paul Noble

Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, 1. Allegretto

Serenady – Dvořák · Elgar · Tchaikovsky

P. Tchaikovsky – Serenade for Strings in C Major op. 48 – II. Walzer

June Wu performs her debut recital at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris as part of Les Amateurs Virtuoses Festival de Piano 2015. June 3, 2015

Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S.514, Franz Liszt

Artur Pizarro performs Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto with Bamberger Symphoniker directed by Thomas Rösner, alongside Poulenc’s Sinfonietta and two rare, glittering gems from Charles Koechlin. This release is a coproduction with Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Following the success of Artur Pizarro’s recordings of Rachmaninoff’s Complete Piano Music on Odradek, hailed in Gramophone as “courageous and poetic” and praised by BBC Music Magazine for his “dazzling finger dexterity”, the “poet amongst pianists” returns with Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. The last of Poulenc’s concertos, this work is jaunty and playful whilst exuding an irresistible Romanticism. Poulenc’s Sinfonietta is a full-scale symphony in all but name, its self-deprecating title a reflection of the composer’s sense of humour and the work’s colourful, urbane character. 

Charles Koechlin is best known for his vast orchestral Jungle Book cycle, but was a prolific composer of tone poems on an array of themes. Both Vers la voûte étoilée, Op. 129 and Sur les flots lointains, Op. 130 date from 1933, and both were published posthumously in 1996. Vers la voûte étoilée (‘Towards the vault of stars’) creates a sense of awe and mystery, reflecting Koechlin’s early ambition to become an astronomer. In the elegiac Sur les flots lointains (’On the distant waves’), Koechlin makes use of a melody composed by American composer, Catherine Murphy Urner.

The Bamberger Symphoniker has caught the world’s attention as an orchestra of depth and imagination, its BBC Proms 2019 performance praised in The Times as “stunning… idiomatic, impassioned, blazing with energy and power… virtuosically played, and enthrallingly pictorial.” The orchestra is directed on this album by the prolific and versatile Viennese conductor, Thomas Rösner.

P. Tchaikovsky – Serenade for Strings in C Major op. 48 – II. Walzer

The Wratislavia Chamber Orchestra