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Track(s) taken from SIGCD325

Letters to Lindbergh

composer
1982
author of text

NYCoS National Girls Choir, Philip Moore (piano), Andrew West (piano), Christopher Bell (conductor)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
Recording details: April 2012
Henry Wood Hall, Glasgow, Scotland
Produced by Alexander Van Ingen
Engineered by Mike Hatch & Richard Bland
Release date: March 2013
Total duration: 13 minutes 39 seconds
 

Reviews

'Like his one-time mentor Benjamin Britten, Bennett showed a genuine aptitude for writing music for children, particularly vocal works. Christopher Bell and the NYCoS National Girls Choir offer a delightful and varied programme of this corner of Bennett's output. In addition to the amusing Letters to Lindbergh, the album includes The Ballad of Sweet William, The Aviary, Dream-Songs, A Song at Evening and Four American Carols. All receive idiomatic readings from the clean, incisive voices of this superb Scottish choir, and throughout one marvels at Bennett's gift for distinctive yet always memorable melody. [This album] can be warmly recommended' (Choir & Organ)

'Produced before Bennett's death, this forms a moving tribute to a masterly composer. The immediately attractive opener, Letters to Lindbergh, quirkily imagines correspondence the aviator might have received from, among others, Pluto (the cartoon dog!) and the Titanic. His gift for soaring, exciting and grateful vocal lines is shown time and time again, and this young Scottish group repay him in spades. Warmly recommended' (Classical Music Magazine)

Since he has a gift for memorable, quintessentially English melody and an instinctive lyric responsiveness to English poetry, Bennett has been able to produce a distinctive, highly attractive and varied and consistently imaginative body of choral work over a period of almost 50 years. Moreover his extensive knowledge of English lyric poetry has enabled Bennett to choose a wide and often fascinating range of texts for appropriate setting. Renowned for his practicality and ability to adapt to any level or idiom, Bennett has been able to produce many works for children and young performers, as the works on this disc eloquently demonstrate. Though they encompass a wide range of texts and approaches, they are all marked by perfect adaptation of words to music, an attractive melodic appeal, wit, humour, pathos and notable economy of means.

One of Bennett’s most immediately attractive works in this vein is Letters to Lindbergh, composed in 1982 as a cantata for high voices and piano duet. The poems by Martin Hall quote whimsically from a selection of the many letters supposed to have been received by the first solo Atlantic aviator, Charles Lindbergh, during his non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. His correspondents include Scott of the Antarctic, the rusting hulk of the Titanic and the Walt Disney cartoon dog, Pluto.

from notes by Malcolm MacDonald © 2012

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