EMR CD048 | DETAILS
  EMR CD048
   
 

HARPSCAPE
Music for harp by Paul Lewis
  Gabriella Dall’Olio (hp)
   
   

Following Paul Lewis’s colourfully orchestrated CD, ‘Heritage and Landscape’, EM Records has now released ‘Harpscape’, an album of solo music for his favourite instrument, the harp. For those who imagine that harp solos are all Regency drawing-room elegance and Victorian virtuoso pyrotechnics this collection may surprise. In contrast to Lewis the English composer of place, here is the cosmopolitan Lewis. Of the four suites recorded here, two were inspired by time spent living and working in New Zealand, one by his love of Paris and French Chanson, and the other by a growing fascination with American Jazz forms. Add to this the belief in the power of melody to speak directly to audiences of all musical tastes that sustained his forty-seven year career composing TV and film music and the result is a varied programme of pieces brimming over with memorable and catchy melodies. To quote Lewis in the extensive booklet notes: “My aim in composing harp solos is to allow the instrument to sound as beautiful and as idiomatic as possible, with equal emphasis on mellifluousness of melody, richness of harmony, and, last but not least, sheer entertainment value!”

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Paul Lewis (b.1941)
‘POSTCARDS FROM PARIS’ (World Première recording)
1. ‘Moonlight in Monmartre’  
2. ‘Left Bank Nocturne’  
3. ‘Shopping in the Champs Elysées’  
       
‘DECOSPHERICS’: FOUR JAZZ-AGE DANCES (World Première recording)
4. ‘Charleston Chic’  
5. ‘Silent Movie Rag’  
6. ‘Cocktail Blues’  
7. ‘Flapper’s Foxtrot’  
       
‘MUSINGS ON A MAORI LULLABY’
Variations on ‘Hine e Hine’ (World Première recording)
8. I. ‘Princess Te Rangi Pai, real name Fanny Rose Howie, writes a simple melody – a lullaby destined to remain forever popular in her native New Zealand’  
9. II. ‘Such a sweet little tune to rock the cradle to’  
10. III. ‘A butterfly flutters in arabesques around the melody and brushes it with its wings’  
11. IV. ‘A moustachioed Major sings the tune to his troops and orders them to fall asleep on the count of three’  
12. V. ‘Even the fairies know the tune’  
13. VI. ‘A haughty dowager duchess sings the lullaby at the top of her voice and keeps her grandchildren awake’  
14. VII. ‘The melody waltzes around the nursery as the children fall asleep’  
15. VIII. ‘A castanetted lady sings a lively song in the night’  
16. IX. ‘Claude Debussy muses on the melody in the moonlight and inadvertently sings himself to sleep’  
17. X. ‘Hine e Hine: a lullaby to warm the hearts of New Zealanders everywhere’  
       
‘SATURDAY NIGHT JAZZ SUITE’ (Word Première recording)
18. ‘Jazette’  
19. ‘Blues for Harpo’  
20. ‘Blue Fiver’  

 

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