SOMM Recordings' The Deeper the Blue offers an intriguing exploration of colour and timbre in music and a revealing investigation of the connections between four very different composers over a near-100-year period. Taking it's title from painter Wassily Kandinsky's assertion that a deepening colour ultimately "turns into silent stillness and becomes white", the recording illuminates the intimate relationship between student and teacher: Vaughan Williams and Maurice Ravel, Kenneth Hesketh with Henri Dutilleux and the influence on Dutilleux of Ravel. Hailed by The Washington Post for her "riveting" playing and "exquisite tone", virtuoso violinist Janet Sung and the Britten Sinfonia - one of the UK's "most flexible chamber orchestras" (Evening Standard) - make their SOMM debuts alongside long-time label artists, conductor Jac van Steen and pianist Simon Callaghan, the latter partnering Sung in Ravel's jazz- and Blues-accented Sonata for Violin and Piano. The last chamber music Ravel composed, it is a colouristic extravaganza brimfull with joy and irrepressible energy. The harmonic language of Dutilleux's piano suite Au grÃ© des ondes boasts a wide colour palette enhanced in brilliance and charm by his former pupil Kenneth Hesketh's orchestral arrangement, here in it's first recording. Harmonic and instrumental colour is central to Hesketh's own music. Also receiving it's first recording, and composed in 2016 for Janet Sung, Hesketh's Inscription-Transformation for violin and orchestra is a richly intricate weaving together of the textures and tones of violin and orchestra. Commemorating Dutilleux and Hesketh's grandmother, who died during it's composition, it's a febrile, endlessly mutating work that pits stratospheric violin against agitated orchestra in music as complex as it is gratifying in the intensity of it's expression. Ralph Vaughan Williams' compact, muscular, Bach-influenced Concerto for Violin and Orchestra combines meditative repose with dance-like extroversion, Maurice Ravel's ever-popular Tzigane a fiery, virtuosic homage to Hungarian folk music.

Tracklist:

Concerto Accademico In D Minor: I. Allegro Pesante
Concerto Accademico In D Minor: II. Adagio
Concerto Accademico In D Minor: III. Presto
Inscription-Transformation
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): I. Prélude En Berceuse [À Claude Pascal]
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): II. Claquettes [À Jacqueline Bonneau]
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): III. Improvisation [À Pierre Sancan]
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): IV. Mouvement Perpétuel [À Leon Kartun]
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): V. Hommage À Bach [À Claude Arrieu]
Au Gré Des Ondes (Arr. K. Hesketh): VI. Étude [À Geneviève Joy]
Tzigane, M. 76 (Version For Violin & Orchestra)
Violin Sonata No. 2, M. 77: I. Allegretto
Violin Sonata No. 2, M. 77: II. Blues. Moderato
Violin Sonata No. 2, M. 77: III. Perpetuum Mobile. Allegro

UPC: 748871327528
Label: Somm Recordings
Release Date: 11.15.19
Format: CD

Williams / Sung / Steen - Deeper Blue (CD)