Williamson: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 Orchestral & Concertos Chandos

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Williamson has had a curious career, with plenty of good luck until the Master of the Queen’s music appointment administered the kiss of death. Yet his talent didn’t run out: the cogent Fifth Symphony of the late 1970s now satisfies more than the wobbly First. All pieces here are memorials; the two for strings are especially touching. Spirited performances from Gamba and his Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

The Times

Rumon Gamba’s direction of the Iceland Symphony is superb, as is the shape and conviction of all these interpretations. The sound is vibrant and clear.

American Record Guide

‘The music here is really quite wonderful and is played with palpable affection and devotion and is recorded with clarity and dynamism…. This release confirms him as a rather special composer.

International Record Review on Volume One

I enthusiastically reviewed the first volume of Chandos’s series of orchestral works by Malcolm Williamson in May 2006 and since then the disc has been much played. I anticipate that this successor will also be returned to often. Although Williamson’s music is on the periphery of the repertoire, it is increasingly difficult to fathom why such a fine and distinctive corpus of work should be so neglected…These excellent performances, captured in vivid and glowing sound, are further reason to celebrate the renaissance of Malcolm Williamson. Volume 3 is keenly anticipated.

International Record Review

Rumon Gamba maintains the devoted advocacy he demonstrated in volume 1, and his Iceland Symphony Orchestra copes manfully with Williamson’s often tricky choral writing. The strings are impressive in the Solemn Epitaphs for Edith Sitwell and the melodious Lento, which sounds like an offcut from a disc of light music in this rather austere context.

BBC Music Magazine

Gamba, who is the Iceland Symphony’s music director, elicits glowing as well as dramatic readings that will undoubtedly help to renew Williamson’s currently marginalized standing. A deeply sustaining release which fills out another important facet of 20th-century English repertoire.

Fanfare

The four works recorded here once again demonstrate that the talented Sydney-born Williamson ill deserved the critical cold-shouldering he had to endure during the last two decades of his life.

Gramophone

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