Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4 Michael McHale, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & John Wilson

• Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936 - 2012):
• 1 Troubadour Music 04:24
• Piano Concerto:
• 2 Piano Concerto: I. Moderato 08:42
• 3 Piano Concerto: II. Presto 04:24
• 4 Piano Concerto: III. Lento 06:36
• 5 Piano Concerto: IV. Vivo 04:35
• Sir Richard Rodney Bennett:
• 6 Aubade 09:03
• Country Dances, Book 1:
• 7 Country Dances, Book 1: No. 1, Buskin 01:04
• 8 Country Dances, Book 1: No. 2, A New Dance 03:05
• 9 Country Dances, Book 1: No. 3, Enfield Common 00:49
• 10 Country Dances, Book 1: No. 4, Chelsea Reach 03:07
• 11 Country Dances, Book 1: No. 5, Nobody's Jig 01:47
• Anniversaries:
• 12 Anniversaries: I. Vivo e dellamato 01:22
• 13 Anniversaries: II. Episode I 03:07
• 14 Anniversaries: III. Episode II 03:27
• 15 Anniversaries: IV. Episode III 03:24
• 16 Anniversaries: V. Episode IV 02:59
• 17 Anniversaries: VI. Episode V 01:33
• 18 Anniversaries: VII. Finale. Vivo e declamato 01:04
• Total Runtime 01:04:32

Info for Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4

In this fourth volume in their Richard Rodney Bennett series, John Wilson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra turn to his Piano Concerto, commissioned by the John Feeney Trust for the CBSO and written in 1968. A chance meeting with Stephen Kovacevich provided Bennett with a willing soloist, and the work was premiered in Birmingham in September that year. The fellow composer Anthony Payne’s judgment was unequivocal: ‘It’s a bloody good work.’ The soloist here, Michael McHale, gives a virtuosic performance which certainly lives up to that judgment. Commissioned in 1982 for the sixtieth anniversary of the BBC, Anniversaries is the other major work on this recording. A brilliantly virtuosic concerto for orchestra, the eleven-section work loosely follows the form of a theme and variations, although it also shows glimpses of a symphonic structure. Dedicated to his close friend Irwin Bazelon who was also sixty that year, the score is a playful and joyous celebration, as well as an orchestral tour de force. In the 1990s, his decision to quit smoking led Bennett to experience a serious creative block. He found a route out of this by immersing himself in English baroque and mediaeval music. The Country Dances (Book 1) are based on folk dances from John Playford’s anthology The English Dancing Master. Troubadour Music was written for John Mauceri’s final season at the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and is based on the thirteenth-century minstrel song ‘Volez Vous Que Je Vous Chant’. Recorded in SS.

Michael McHale, piano
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson, conductor

Michael McHale
Belfast-born Michael McHale has established himself as one of Ireland’s leading pianists and has developed a busy international career as a solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician.

He has performed as a soloist with the Minnesota, Hallé, Moscow Symphony and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and all five of the major Irish orchestras, and performed at the Tanglewood and Tokyo Spring Festivals, Wigmore Hall, London, Berlin Konzerthaus, Lincoln Center, New York, Symphony Hall, Boston and Pesti Vigadó in Budapest.

Michael’s début solo album The Irish Piano was released in 2012 by RTÉ lyric fm and selected as ‘CD of the Week’ by the critic Norman Lebrecht. More recent solo releases include Schubert: Four Impromptus on Ergodos, and recordings as soloist with the London Symphony, BBC Symphony and RTÉ National Symphony Orchestras. His discography of over twenty albums includes releases on Delos, Nimbus Alliance, Champs Hill, and eight duo recital albums on Chandos with Michael Collins. The début album of the McGill/McHale Trio Portraits on Cedille featuring special narrations by Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali was released in 2017 and immediately entered the Top 25 US Billboard Classical Chart. Upcoming releases in 2020 include a recording of Richard Rodney Bennett's Piano Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Wilson for Chandos.

Winner of the Terence Judd/Hallé Award in 2009, Michael was also awarded the Brennan and Field Prizes at the 2006 AXA Dublin International Piano Competition, the 2005 Camerata Ireland/Accenture Award, and in 2016 a Major Individual Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, and his teachers and mentors include John O’Conor, Réamonn Keary, Christopher Elton, Ronan O’Hora and Barry Douglas. In 2017 Michael was invited to become a Patron of the Ulster Youth Orchestra, and in 2018 he was appointed as a part-time professor of piano for undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Cork School of Music in Ireland.

​ “…McHale played with cool authority and understated panache as one expected from a young pianist whose international career is in serious take-off mode…” Dick O’Riordan, Sunday Business Post

“...performed with zest and sensitivity by pianist Michael McHale with the RTÉ National Symphony under Courtney Lewis... McHale makes a potent case for all of it” Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“…McHale was a wonderfully incisive soloist… this was exactly the sort of headlong, exciting adventure that Prokofiev intended it to be…” Michael Dervan, Irish Times

Booklet for Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4