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Notes
Bliss composed The Enchantress in 1951, the year of his sixtieth birthday, for Kathleen Ferrier. The text is a free adaptation of the Second Idyll of Theocritus, made by Henry Reed, and well suited to Bliss’s love of classical Greek authors.
Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, from 1955, was written for the CBSO, the first in a number of commissions from the John Feeney Trust. Inspired by John Blow’s Coronation Anthems, the work is a set of variations on a Sinfonia from that collection, each variation reflecting the text of a verse from Psalm 23.
Described as a sacred cantata, Mary of Magdala was Bliss’s second Feeney Trust commission, composed during 1962 and 1963. For a libretto, Bliss turned to Christopher Hassall, his collaborator on three previous works, including The Beatitudes.
Bliss conducted the premiere at the Three Choirs Festival in 1963, and wrote in his programme note: ‘One of the loveliest stories in the New Testament is that in the 20th chapter of St John’s Gospel, telling of how Mary Magdalene, lingering at the sepulchre, was the first to see the risen Christ. She, supposing him to be the gardener.’
The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus give of their best under their former chief conductor Sir Andrew Davis, and the contributions from the soloists, Dame Sarah Connolly and James Platt, are outstanding.
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Reviews
“… Performances and engineering are all first class …” ***½
Tony Way – Limelightmagazine.com.au – 18 May 2020
***** Coup de Cœur
Michel Fleury - Classica magazine (France) - April 2020
“… For that [Mary of Magadala] alone this disc would be welcome but in a sympathetic acoustic with fiercely engaged but sensitively shaped readings, Bliss adherents will need to add this to their roster of necessary discs.”
Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb-International.com – 7 January 2020
“…this disc is urgently recommended to all Bliss admirers.”
John Quinn – MusicWeb-International.com – 3 December 2019
Performance **** Recording *****
“… It’s a work [23rd Psalm] that finds Davis in his element, pacing the whole with an impeccable assuredness, coaxing ravishing wind playing in the Introduction, expansively at home in the first variation which elaborates ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters’, and bitingly trenchant in the variation that follows. Throughout, Davis is scrupulously solicitous of Bliss’s carefully calculated play of orchestral colour, and warm surround-sound recording is the icing on the expressive cake…”
Paul Riley – BBC Music magazine – January 2020
“… Sarah Connolly’s thrillingly commanding and excitingly involving portrayal of the spurned Simaetha … demands to be heard, and she enjoys polished and committed backing from the excellent BBC SO under Andrew Davis…. Aficionados will naturally want to investigate this excellent release and can rest assured that both Ralph Couzens’s engineering and Andrew Burn’s annotation leave nothing to be desired.”
Andrew Achenbach – Gramophone magazine – December 2019
“Admirers of the composer Arthur Bliss may find that the most attractive item on this new surround sound disc on the Chandos label is one of his finest pieces, the Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, appearing here in its first incarnation in the SACD medium. Sir Andrew Davis does full justice to the colourful, inventive score… Davis continues his championship of the lesser-known works of Bliss with this coupling of The Enchantress with Mary of Magdala. The always exemplary Dame Sarah Connolly and James Platt are the soloists, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.”
Barry Forshaw – ClassicalCDChoice.co.uk – 14 November 2019
Recording of the Week
“…The album opens with a hair-raising performance of the dramatic scena The Enchantress… Dame Sarah Connolly brings her[Simaetha] to life with the combination of blazing sensuality and vengeful vehemence that have won her such acclaim as Charpentier’s Medea, Handel’s Agrippina and Britten’s Phaedra…But it’s the final piece here that was the real revelation for me – the 1963 cantata Mary of Magdala, scored for contralto, bass, choir and orchestra and depicting Mary’s encounter with the newly-risen Christ with an immediacy and tenderness that never tips over into sentimentality. Connolly takes centre-stage again, conveying the “fallen woman”’s raw abjection as well as her loyalty and eventual incredulous joy …”
Katherine Cooper – PrestoMusic.com – 8 November 2019
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