Lea Sawyers News
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2024-04-24
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2023-08-24 03:30:00
MahlerFest XXXV (CD Review)
[…] Mahler in turn influenced. The Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra draws together young professionals, conservatory and university students, and advanced amateurs. In 2005, the International Gustav Mahler Society of Vienna awarded Colorado MahlerFest its rarely bestowed Mahler Gold Medal. MahlerFest was honored alongside the New York Philharmonic, joining such past recipients as the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. Last year, we reviewed their recording MahlerFest XXXIV, which featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 along with Symphony No. 5 by the British composer Philip Sawyers (see that review here). In November, 2022, MahlerFest XXXV featured a truly ambitious program: the grand Symphony No. 3 by Mahler along with the world premiere concert performance of Symphony No. 10 by the late English composer Christopher Gunning (1944-2023).The Mahler and Gunning symphonies are quite different in scale, the former a six-movement work featuring not only a large orchestra but soloists and choirs, while the latter is a relatively brief one-movement work for orchestra alone. To present […]
Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium
2023-06-18 11:47:34
It’s been an amazing weekend seeing Philip Sawyers‘ new oratorio Mayflower on the Sea of Time come to life. Huge congrats to Philip S and to librettist Philip Groom for a piece that blew the roof off Worcester Cathedral. The word I keep coming back to is ‘thrilling’. It was. I’ll be provocative and say […]
2022-07-09 13:59:20
Kenneth Woods, the conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, joined me to play and discuss some marvelous music he has recently recorded. Ken plays music by the British composers Matthew Taylor and Philip Sawyers.
These new words by Matthew Taylor and Philip Sawyers both demonstrate the tradition we call ‘c
2022-02-09 07:28:47
English Symphony Orchestra launchs its 2022 concert season
English Symphony Orchestra & Kenneth Woods Having been extremely busy online, the English Symphony Orchestra has announced the launch of its 2022 concert season under conductor Kenneth Woods, with concerts during March to June 2022 in Hereford, Great Malvern, Cheltenham, Leominster, and Worcester. One of the threads running through the season is Mozart, with three of the late symphonies plus the Adagio and Fugue. There are two concertos by Philip Sawyers, his Double Concerto with Daniel Rowland (viola) and Maja Bogdanovic (cello), and the Viola Concerto with Daniel Rowland. Whilst concerto lovers can also catch Zoe Beyers as the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Other contemporary pieces include Bob Chilcott's St John Passion (written for Wells Cathedral in 2013), with Academia Musica Choir. Twentieth century music includes a couple of relative rarities, Poulenc's Sinfonietta, a lovely work that does not come out as often as it should, and Schulhoff's Suite […]