Cyril Scott - Symphony No. 1 in G Major (1899)
Conducted by Martyn Brabbins with the BBC Philharmonic.
I. Allegro Frivolo - 00:00
II. Andante Con Moto - 6:43
III. Allegretto - 13:07
IV. Finale - Themes and Variations - 18:09
IV. Finale - Fuga - 26:01
Cyril Scott - Symphony No. 3 "The Muses" (1937)
Conducted by Martyn Brabbins with the BBC Philharmonic and Huddersfield Choral Society.
I. Melpomene - Music of Epic Poetry and Tragedy - 00:00
II. Thalia - Music of Comedy and Merry Verse - 14:32
III. Erato - Music of Love and Poetry - 20:13
IV. Terpsichore - Music of Dance and Song- 26:57
Symphony No. 3 The Muses requires an enormous orchestra, including four flutes, a large percussion section with wind machine and two harps, the distinctive sound of orchestral piano, and in the last movement a vocalising choir. The symphony, which celebrates four of the nine muses (daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne and the spirits of poetry, the arts and astronomy), is the crowning work of Scott's compositional career up to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Cyril Scott - Symphony No. 4 (1951)
Conducted by Martyn Brabbins with the BBC Philharmonic..
I. Adagio - Andante Poco Rubato - 00:00
II. Molto Tranqullo - 9:34
III. Scherzo - Allegro - Allegro Non Troppo - 16:39
IV. Rondo Retrospettivo - Adaio - Energico - 20:33
"The Fourth Symphony was completed in 1952, but has not been performed until now. The music is characterised by its onward flow, which despite constantly changing time signatures, sometimes of an exotic nature, maintains a plastic continuity. Scott's instrumental lines are often unexpectedly chromatic, supported by harmonies based on fourths, and the orchestration,incorporating orchestral piano, is colourful and constantly changing. At great climaxes, especially when underpinned by glittering harp glissandi, one tends to be reminded of the biggest moments in Ravel or Debussy, particularly towards the end of the work."
"A preludial Adagio introduces the first movement, creating a distinctive mood and a world of its own with a brief motif in the strings, an ascending scale, and a figure of rising and falling triplets, all of which will reappear throughout. Remembering Scott's pre-war orchestral tone poem Neptune one notes the frequent use of similar orchestral textures, especially in the first movement, and wonders whether this, again, is sea music. Scott offers us no clue. The movement falls into two sections, a vigorous exploration of the opening ideas and an extended slower episode,coloured by many instrumental solos, which gradually builds to a climax. At the end a mysterious stillness descends before the overwhelming close -- a notable Scott fingerprint, the passage prefi guring the end of the symphony."
"The slow movement is one of Scott's most successful static meditations, all colour and atmosphere, and contrasts with the brief, headlong Scherzo which follows, its dancing theme in 15 / 8. The fi nale, like the first movement, has a slow introduction, and maintains a remarkable narrative thread -- this surely is more sea music -- through a succession of contrasted, glittering episodes. It culminates in a moment of concentrated stillness, marked Estatico, con amore, and a blazing final chord."
"Cyril Scott was amongst the many young British musicians who studied music in Germany, where he acquired German artistic ideas of the time. Whilst in Germany he met and became a champion of the German poet Stefan George and this friendship proved immeasurably influential in his compositional writing, especially his First Symphony. Scott dedicated the work to George citing '...whose art I am indebted for many of my best and most religious ideas.' It is thanks to Scott's friendship with Percy Grainger that the score is still in existence. Grainger was obsessed with archiving the musical time through which they lived and was thus constantly asking Scott for his manuscripts for his museum in Melbourne. It is only because of this that several of Scott's scores have survived, including this First Symphony which experiments with the modern, rhapsodic style and various orchestral colours that he was to develop in his subsequent works. Peter Dickinson noted on a previous volume that, 'Scott's command of the orchestra still sounds astonishing -- no wonder film composers such as Bernard Herrmann admired him decades later.'
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