King Arthur (Arr. Laurie). Par PURCELL HENRY. King Arthur was the only one of Purcell's professionally produced operas to have been designed as a semi-opera - the others were all adaptations of earlier plays. Dryden made a real attempt to integrate the music into the drama, but since he ascribed to the dramatic conventions of the period which virtually confined music to allegorical or supernatural beings and thier worshippers, or servants, shepherds and similar characters, the main action mostly occurs in the spoken sections, and even the two singing characters, Philidel and Grimbald speak more than they sing. / Niveau : Intermédiaire / Rép Classique / Répertoire / Conducteur

This piece takes its title from a painting by Daniel Maclise (1806-1870) in the Manchester City Art Gallery. Its subject is the mock Celtic Legend of a water nymph who falls for a mortal and struggles hopelessly to leave her element and join him on land. The Gods taking pity on her failure intervene and turn her into a harp transforming her weeping into a gentle music of wind through strings.

The surviving second and third acts of Catone in Utica, one of Metastasio's most dramatic libretti, premiered in Verona in the spring of 1737 in a setting by Vivaldi, contain some of his finest, most mature, and most original arias, and are published here for the first time. They evince a potential dramatic intensity that makes us regret all the more the loss of the first act. Only one aria of Act I can be definitely recovered from a surviving opera, but the rest has now also been successfully reconstructed by Alessandro Ciccolini, whose intimate knowledge of Vivaldi's working methods, combined with brilliant stylistic insight won universal acclaim for his work on Vivaldi's Motezuma and Ercole sul Termodoonte. Ciccolini has also composed cadenzas and da capo variations for all the arias, published here in an appendix.A complete recording under the direction of Alan Curtis is available from Naïve Records(OP30545).Press Quotes:'[For his completion,] Alessandro Ciccolini, who, mindful that Vivaldi frequently adapted vocal music for his instrumental works and vice versa, has composed the missing passages using themes from the concertos as his starting point. His arias dovetail beautifully with Vivaldi's scheme of things...' The Guardian'Ciccolini and Curtis deserve enormous credit for transforming an incomplete obscurity into a coherent and compelling opera.'Gramophone'The opera survives incomplete, but this is a fascinating and apt reconstruction and there is some marvellous stuff here.' BBC Music Magazine / Conducteur

Bhakti was written in 1982 to a commission from IRCAM Paris. It is in twelve short movements totalling about fifty minutes. There are 36 subsections; each one defined by a certain number of instruments playing a certain pitch cell. As there are only 12 types of subsection each occurs (with variation) 3 times thus making for repetitions over the course of the work.Scored for a chamber group fo 15 instrumentalists and quadraphonic tape.

For Cello and string orchestra and commisioned by the 1985 Kings Lynn Festival with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Maw's highly individual musical voice is basically tonal blending the familiar with the unfamiliar and characterised by a natural lyricism. a great many remarkable qualities. . . it contains numerous precise and beautiful images.Paul Griffiths The Times 22 September 1986