BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kriss Russman - Butterworth: Orchestral Works (2016) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

When George Butterworth joined the army in 1914, his most recent works included the song cycle Six Songs from 'A Shropshire Lad' as well as the Rhapsody 'A Shropshire Lad', which he called 'an orchestral epilogue' to his settings of A. E. Housman's poems. The Rhapsody has since been described as 'one of the greatest of all English orchestral works' and when Butterworth left England to fight in the First World War, he was seen as one of the bright hopes of British music a hope that in August 1916 was extinguished in the trenches at the Somme. When Butterworth joined up he stopped composing and also destroyed several manuscripts that he felt were inferior. An exception was an Orchestral Fantasia which he had started just before the war broke out: a 92-bar full score manuscript lasting some three-and-a-half minutes has been preserved. On the first page Butterworth wrote 'see short score' which implies that the work may have been completed but if so, the score in question has been lost. The composer and conductor Kriss Russman has therefore taken up where the manuscript breaks off, adding some 5 minutes of music through a process which he describes in his liner notes as 'developing Butterworth's original ideas and combining them with additional material derived from an analysis of his other music'. Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Russman himself, the world première recording of the Fantasia closes the present disc which also includes some of Butterworth's best loved pieces, such as The Banks of Green Willow. Russman has also made orchestral arrangements of the five-movement Suite for String Quartette and the Six Songs from 'A Shropshire Lad', both of which are recorded here for the first time. The soloist in the song cycle, and in the three songs that make up Love Blows as the Wind Blows, is James Rutherford.

George Butterworth died on the western front on 5 August 1916, a month into the Somme offensive. He was 31, and though he had not composed anything since enlisting at the outbreak of war in 1914, he was already regarded as one of the outstanding young talents in British music. This disc collects together everything that survives of Butterworth's orchestral music, bulking it out with further arrangements by conductor Kriss Russman. While the orchestrations of the Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, sung with typical care and sensitivity by James Rutherford, don't diminish the music in the way that the Finzi arrangements on the Aurora Orchestra's recent disc traduced that composer, they still tend to overegg the already exquisite original piano versions. Russman s completion of the Orchestral Fantasia that Butterworth left as a 92-bar torso when he went off to war is more worthwhile, though, even haunting in its way, and his eight-minute version is far more convincing than the 17-minute one performed at the English Music festival last year. Butterworth's two best-known works, the idyll The Banks of Green Willow, and the rhapsody A Shropshire Lad, receive decent, if not truly memorable performances. *** –Guardian, 07/07/16

A fascinating addition to the catalogue of recorded music by George Butterworth. A very fine collection of well-known and lesser-known works by one of Britain's most promising composers. Music Web, July '16 /// Baritone James Rutherford is in glorious voice in both the 1913 triptych Love Blows as the Wind Blows and Kriss Russman's ripely sympathetic orchestral arrangements of the indelible Six Songs from 'A Shropshire Lad'. Classical Ear, July'16 /// Here's powerful advocacy for one of British music's heroes. Performance ***** Recording ***** BBC MUSIC CHORAL & SONG CHOICE –BBC Music Magazine, Sept'16

George Butterworth died 100 years ago this week. His surviving orchestral music isn't enough to fill a single disc. But here we get 75 minutes worth, the extras and completions all orchestrated by conductor Kriss Russman. The results are unfailingly sympathetic: Russman wisely keeps things light and transparent, making the full-blooded moments more of a surprise. A Shropshire Lad's Think no more, lad is wittily scored, and the string writing in Is my team ploughing? is exquisite. Impeccable singing too, from baritone James Rutherford. He s also heard in Butterworth's own orchestral version of Love Blows as the Wind Blows. On the Way to Kew's bittersweet nostalgia is a thing to treasure, he and Russman handling the soft fade with tender affection. The unpublished, undated Suite for String Quartette is a treat heard on tutti strings, its slow fourth section sounding like an Elgar slow movement in miniature. More speculative is a finished version of Butterworth's Orchestral Fantasia, its 92 bars left unfinished in 1914 after the composer had enlisted. This is richly scored, deeply attractive music, Russman's completion effective and idiomatic. Russman and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales also give us The Banks of Green Willow, the Two English Idylls and a ravishing, sensitive account of the Rhapsody A Shrophire Lad . Very well played and beautifully recorded: this is all the Butterworth you'll need. ArtsDesk, 06/08/16 /// The elegiac tone is nicely caught by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales –Ft, 12/8/16

TRACKLIST

1 Idyll: The Banks of Green Willow 06:04

Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad
2 I. Loveliest of trees 02:47
3 II. When I was one-and-twenty 01:23
4 III. Look not in my eyes 02:11
5 IV. Think no more, lad 01:18
6 V. The lads in their hundreds 02:07
7 VI. Is my team ploughing? 03:44
8 Rhapsody A Shropshire Lad 10:06

Two English Idylls
9 I. Allegro scherzando 04:26
10 II. Adagio non troppo 04:33

Suite for String Quartette
11 I. Andante con moto, molto espressivo 03:42
12 II. Scherzando - non allegro 00:56
13 III. Allegro molto 04:29
14 IV. Molto moderato ed espressivo 04:41
15 V. Moderato 04:47

Love Blows as the Wind Blows
16 I. In the year that’s come and gone 03:07
17 II. Life in her creaking shoes 01:58
18 III. On the way to Kew 03:56
19 Orchestral Fantasia 09:08

PERSONNEL
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Kriss Russman conductor
James Rutherford baritone (2–7, 16–18)