NMC Recordings featuring the works of Roger SMALLEY   ~   Giles SWAYNE   ~   Michael TIPPETT Roger SMALLEY (b. 1943)____________________NMC D083 Poles Apart Crepuscule • Piano Trio • Poles Apart • Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano • Variations on a Theme of Chopin • Fryderik CHOPIN Mazurka in C sharp minor, Op.50 No.3 Johannes BRAHMS Intermezzo in E minor, Op.116 No.5 Douglas Finch, piano • Continuum Ensemble • Philip Headlam, conductor 'Classic examples of taking the work of a master as a springboard for bold innovation: as fine… as Berio's reworkings of Mahler or Schubert' Gramophone Roger SMALLEY (b. 1943)___________________NMC D017M Pulses for 5x4 Players BBC Symphony Orchestra • Richard Bemas, conductor 'Pulses is still fresh and impressive 25 years on, its sound growing inexorably like cumulus clouds… The performers… do the piece full justice, prompting a query as to why it has not been played more often' The Wire 'This is meditative music, we're invited to listen to a sound or a texture and trace its gradual evolution… And the sounds are surprisingly beautiful' BBC Music Magazine Giles SWAYNE (b. 1946)___________________NMC D016 Cry BBC Singers • John Poole, conductor 'Giles Swayne caused a stir with this gigantic work… with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to understand why… Excellent singing from the BBC Singers under John Poole' BBC Music Magazine 'Frequently compelling, occasionally sublime… The BBC Singers perform heroically' Vox John TAVENER (1944-2013)_______________NMC D208 Akhmatova Requiem       Akhmatova Requiem • Six Russian Folk Songs Phyllis Bryn-Julson soprano • John Shirley-Quirk bass-baritone • BBC Symphony Orchestra • Gennady Rozhdestvensky conductor • Elise Ross soprano • The Nash Ensemble More Information Michael TIPPETT (1905-1998)______________NMC D103 Remembering Tippett: recordings from the l940s       ARCHIVE Concerto for Double String Orchestra • Fantasy Sonata for piano • String Quartet No.2 Thomas TALLIS Spem in alium Phillis Sellick, piano • Zorian Quartet • Walter Goehr, conductor • Morley College Choir • Michael Tippett, conductor 'The anthology of premiere recordings… is truly historic. Walter Goehr's 1943 recording of the Double Concerto — co-produced by Benjamin Britten while Tippett was in prison as a conscientious objector — seems to use only a small number of players, but has a gripping intensity' BBC Music Magazine Michael TIPPETT (1905-1998)______________NMC 0104 Symphonies 2 & 4       ARCHIVE Symphony No.2 • Symphony No.4 BBC Symphony Orchestra • Michael Tippett, conductor ' [Tippett's] octagenorion conducting of Symphonies 2 and 4 richly deserves bringing into general circulation… These are rich, glowing, utterly convincing performances. As for No.2 … this is the performance — the one performance — in which its fresco-like single movement makes something like complete sense' BBC Music Magazine 'The Second [symphony's] overall effect is bracing, heroic, radiating that supremely positive spirit which was Tippetts special gift to 20th-century music' Gramophone NMC Recordings are distributed in Australia by Rockian Trading, P.O.Box 44, Briar Hill, Vic, 3088, Australia Telephone (03) 9432 4149 ~ Facsimile (03) 9444 6879