/ discography at a glance

But towering head and shoulders above all the rest is my CD of the year, the fruit of a visionary unfolding of the music of an even more neglected composer in a series of concerts at Symphony Hall by the CBSO and its Finnish music director who is such a champion of British music.

John Foulds, orchestral cellist turned composer, died in Calcutta in 1939, having moved from England to India to pursue his interest in the musics and philosophies of that alluring sub-continent. His greatest music, mixing the opulent textures andsumptuous colourings of Wagner, Strauss, Mahler and Elgar (all of whom he will have played and some of them known) with the microtonal scales of nonwestern idioms, communicates powerfully and rewardingly.

There is so much on this generous release, recorded in Symphony Hall earlier this year, to enthuse about: the post-Brahmsian homage to violinist Joseph Joachim which is Apotheosis, Daniel Hope the sweet-toned soloist here; the mysterious allure of theneo-Hebridean Lyra Celtica, with soprano Susan Bickley mesmeric in the wordless microtones Foulds demands of her; the primal energy of Three Mantras; and the Straussian vision of Mirage, all urgently, compellingly delivered by a topform CBSO under the inspired Sakari Oramo. If you don't already own this, get it now.

Christopher Morley

Sakari Oramo has made a bit of a personal cause out of the music of the Manchester-born composer and violinist John Foulds (1880-1939). Foulds is one of the forgotten figures in early 20th-century British music; his music was increasingly influenced by eastern philosophy and mysticism. The two concertante pieces here - Lyra Celtica for mezzo-soprano, and Apotheosis for violin - are first recordings, gloriously sung and played by Susan Bickley and Daniel Hope respectively, and Oramo gives every piece here the opportunity to make its mark.

If any one work shows why the English composer John Foulds deserves rescuing from the oblivion he was cast into for most of the 20th century it is the astonishing Three Mantras. It isn’t just that the music is extraordinarily forward-looking – especially when it comes to rhythm (there are times when one is reminded of Messiaen). It is also vibrant, brilliant, at times exploding with exuberance. Imagine something between the wilder moments of The Planets and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and you might begin to get the picture – though that hardly does justice to Foulds’s sheer originality. That’s also true of the much more impressionistic Lyra celtica – a ‘concerto for voice and orchestra’ in which folk influence leads to the use of microtonal scales, non-tonal harmonies and captivating free-floating melodies, far removed from the nostalgic ‘Celtic Twilight’ lyricism of some of Foulds’s English contemporaries.

Apotheosis (Elegy) and Mirage show the younger Foulds still in the shadow of Brahms, Wagner and Richard Strauss, yet still capable of breathtaking surprises alongside the more conventional (but very appealing) melodic writing. The performances are splendid. Sakari Oramo clearly believes in this music, and has just as clearly communicated his passionate conviction to the excellent soloists Susan Bickley and Daniel Hope, and to his orchestra. Fine recordings, too. An enthusiastic recommendation.

Stephen Johnson

A fascinating portrait of a colourful, restless personality.

The extraordinary Three Mantras (1919-30) originally served as the preludes to the three acts of Foulds’s abandoned Sanskrit opera, Avatara. In the opening ‘Mantra of Activity’ Oramo daringly sets an even more propulsive tempo than does Barry Wordsworth on his pioneering Lyrita recording, yet with no loss of composure. A wordless female chorus intensifes the atmosphere of mystic awe that permeates the succeeding ‘Mantra of Bliss’. The concluding ‘Mantra of Will’ strictly employs the seven-note modal scale of a South Indian raga. A daring, extended pause ushers in a flamboyantly savage pay-off (here rather more transparent and tidier in execution than under Wordsworth).

Next comes Lyra Celtica, a concerto for wordless voice and orchestra written between 1917 and the mid-1920s for his wife, the soprano Maud McCarthy. In the event Foulds completed only two of the three movements (the finale remains a 150-bar fragment). It’s an alluring discovery, which deploys both microtones and quarter-tones (a Foulds trademark). Mezzo Susan Bickley rises valiantly to the challenge.

By comparison, Apotheosis (1909) and Mirage (1910) strike a rather more conventional note, though Daniel Hope’s contribution in the former locates the lyrical beauty in this heartfelt elegy in memory of Joachim. Richard Strauss looms large in Mirage an opulent 23-minute tone-poem with much arresting incident, which Oramo and the CBSO do proud.

The sound is hugely vivid and Calum MacDonald’s annotation a model of its kind. Don’t miss this gem of a release.

Andrew Achenbach

Seine vierte Tondichtung mit dem Titel „Apotheosis" widmete Foulds dem Andenken des großen Geigers Joseph Joachim. Im Grunde handelt es sich um eine elfminütige, hochromantische und sehr eindrucksvolle Elegie, für die sich der junge Ausnahmegeiger Daniel Hope mit wunderbarem Ton und nachdrücklicher Intensität rückhaltlos einsetzt.