EMR CD063 | DETAILS
  EMR CD063
   
 

HARPSCENES
Music for harp by Paul Lewis
   
  Fiona Hosford
Camilla Pay
Alexander Rider
   
  EAN 5 060263 500599

‘Harpscenes’ is the second disc of harp music by Paul Lewis to be released on EM Records, the first being ‘Harpscape’ (EMR CD048). As a composer who has had a long career as a composer for TV and film drama, Lewis tends to think visually, and this recording contains several works whose inspiration is not only visual but to which dramatic scenarios pertain. As Lewis writes in the booklet notes: “The harp has always fascinated and enchanted me. As a solo instrument it is capable of a myriad of contrasting tone colours and dazzling effects, and as an orchestral instrument it can impart a glow and sparkle to the overall sound not unlike touches of gold on richly patinated bronze. My aim in composing harp solos is simply to allow the instrument to sound as beautiful and as idiomatic as possible, with equal emphasis on mellifluousness of melody and richness of harmony.”

 

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Paul Lewis (b.1943)
1. ‘VALSE NOSTALGIQUE’  
       
‘LULLABY AND MUSIC BOX WALTZ’
2. ‘Lullaby’  
3. ‘Music Box Waltz’  
       
‘JANE AUSTEN SUITE’
4. ‘Prologue’  
5. ‘Country Dance’  
6. ‘Romance’  
7. ‘Ride Away’  
       
‘FOUR ANTICKE DANCES’
8. ‘Monsieur Léo’s Bassedanse’  
9. ‘Master Will’s Saraband’  
10. ‘Mistress Nell’s Pavan’  
11. ‘Master Kit’s Brawl’  
       
‘TWO SOLILOQUIES’
12. Lingeringly languid  
13. Caressingly  
       
‘TWO FOR FI’
14. ‘Sunday Morning Meander’  
15. ‘Memory Lane’  
       
‘TINTINNABULATIONS’
16. ‘Chimes at Chagford’  
17. ‘Bells at Bosham’  
18. ‘Westham Welcome’  
       
ALL WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDINGS

 

REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD