Volante Opera Productions Demo Cast
Release Date: 22 September 2023
Label: Prima Facie
Packaging Type: Custom Packaging
No of Units: 10
Barcode: 7141148060051
Genres: Classical
Description
The complete set of Paul Corfield Godfrey's Epic Scenes from The Silmarillion after the mythology of J R R Tolkien.
These settings for soloists, chorus and orchestra survey the whole mythology of J R R Tolkien's writings on the First Age of Middle-Earth and beyond, using the author's own words with the kind permission of the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins Publishers.
As such it is the largest scale musical work ever written using Tolkien's texts, and is designed for performance over five evenings: Feanor, Beren and Luthien, The Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin and The War of Wrath.
The scores were written over a period of forty years from 1981 and 2021 and this first complete performance by singers from Welsh National Opera (with an orchestra prepared from live samples) was recorded over a period of six years from 2017 to 2023.
All five parts of the cycle are here included, together with the complete assembled texts and a guide to The Silmarillion summarising the plot as adapted in the epic scenes themselves.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"The Fall of Gondolin is a superb rendition of an unparalleled story. Its greatest virtue lies in its ability to enhance rather than overshadow that story." - Tolkien Music Website
"This is a rewarding recording of a rich and complex work which will bring enjoyment to many - and not just to Tolkien fans." - MusicWeb International on Beren and Luthien
"I was even more impressed by this than by Godfrey's other Tolkien-based works." - MusicWeb International on The Children of Hurin
"I am eager to enter again into this lush, sometimes harsh and epic universe of tone and word-painting." - Fanfare on Feanor
Tracklisting
Xuefei Yang, Johannes Moser, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Or
Kenneth Hamilton
Michael Cretu
Laura Serra
Vladimir Miller, Neil Latchman, Keri Farish
Terence Charlston, Julian Perkins
John Turner & Neil Smith
I Solisti Di Londra & Aleksander Szram
Ensemble La Francais
Kenneth Hamilton
Christoph Croise; Andrey Baranov; Alexander Panfilov
Trio Parnassus
Katharina Kammerloher (mezzo-soprano), Arttu Kataja (baritone), Eric Schneider (piano)
BachWerkVokal, Gordon Safari
Ostrava New Orchestra, Owen Underhill, Ostravska Banda, Petr Kotik, Elision Ensemble, Arditti Quartet, Switch~ Ensemble, Jason Thorpe Buchanan
Kilian Herold, Barbara Buntrock, Florian Donderer, Tanja Tetzlaff
