Premiere Recordings on Two New McCabe CDs

Premiere Recordings on Two New McCabe CDs
As the 75th Birthday year draws to a close, two new CDs featuring John McCabe’s music have just been released. The first features the trumpeter Simon Desbruslais, together with The Orchestra of the Swan, conducted by Kenneth Woods presenting the premiere recording of La Primavera -a trumpet concerto commissioned by the orchestra. McCabe says of his work (which utilizes both trumpet and flugelhorn) that ‘the natural impulse…came from considering two aspects of the coming of Spring: the exuberance and vitality of burgeoning new growth, and the flowering (literally!) of the new or refreshed life, as it expands’. Full details of the CD here.

The other disc is a fascinating compendium on Naxos (part of their British Music Society series) John McCabe: Composer, Pianist, Conductor. The recordings are taken from three stages of McCabe’s career, the first being his Symphony No 1 Elegy, written in 1965 and recorded in 1967 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. There follows three works for solo piano (Fantasy on a theme of Liszt; Capriccio; and Sostenuto) performed by McCabe himself. Finally the orchestral work, written for the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, entitled Tuning, which is the only recorded example of McCabe as a conductor. It is taken from a live performance at Glasgow City Hall, Scotland, in January 1986. All the recordings have been specially re-mastered for this reissue.

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