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For An Unknown Soldier
Jonathan Dove

London Mozart Players

For An Unknown Soldier

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212045220
Catnr: SIGCD 452
Release date: 02 December 2016
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212045220
Catalogue number
SIGCD 452
Release date
02 December 2016
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
NL

About the album

For An Unknown Soldier is a cantata of remembrance to mark the centenary of the First World War. Commissioned by the London Mozart Players, Jonathan Dove’s poignant work combines the words of war poets such as Wilfred Owen, William Noel Hodgson & Isaac Rosenberg with choral performances from tenor Nicky Spence, the Oxford Bach Choir and Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir.

It is paired with the ensemble’s performance of Dove’s An Airmail Letter from Mozart, directed from the piano by Melvyn Tan.

De eerste opname van For An Unknown Soldier
For An Unknown Soldier is een cantate voor de honderdste herdenking van de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Dit aangrijpende werk van Jonathan Dove, gecomponeerd in opdracht van de London Mozart Players, combineert de woorden van oorlogsdichters als Wilfred Owen, William Noel Hodgson en Isaac Rosenberg met kooruitvoeringen van tenor Nicky Spence, het Oxford Bach Choir en het Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir. De cantate vertelt het verhaal van één man, een onbekende soldaat, en zijn reis door de oorlog, van het enthousiasme aan het begin tot aan het ontdekken van de realiteit van de oorlog.

De cantate wordt gekoppeld aan een uitvoering van Dove's An Airmail Letter from Mozart, geleid vanaf de piano door Melvyn Tan. Dove over zijn inspiratie voor het werk: “Als Mozart vandaag zou leven, zou hij kunnen genieten van de snelheid van reizen, en de toegankelijkheid van afgelegen plaatsen. Maar hoe snel en ver hij ook zou reizen, hij zou waarschijnlijk nog steeds aan [zijn echtgenote] Constanze denken, en aan haar schrijven. (…) Hij zou een thema en variaties kunnen noteren als een muzikale brief. Een of twee variaties zouden iets van de toonval van plaatsen die hij bezocht kunnen vatten, anderen zouden gedachten over Constanze zijn, intiem, teder en speels.”

Artist(s)

London Mozart Players

Founded in 1949 by Harry Blech to delight audiences with the works of Mozart and Haydn, the London Mozart Players is the UK’s longest established chamber orchestra. Known for its unmistakable British roots, the orchestra has developed an outstanding reputation for adventurous, ambitious programming from Baroque through to genre-crossing contemporary music. LMP has enjoyed a long history of association with many of the world’s finest artists including Sir James Galway, Dame Felicity Lott, Jane Glover, Howard Shelley, Nicola Benedetti, John Suchet and Simon Callow. The orchestra enjoys an international reputation, touring extensively throughout Europe and the Far East. The London Mozart Players regularly performs on London’s premier concert platforms, including the Royal Festival Hall, St John’s Smith Square and Cadogan Hall...
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Founded in 1949 by Harry Blech to delight audiences with the works of Mozart and Haydn, the London Mozart Players is the UK’s longest established chamber orchestra. Known for its unmistakable British roots, the orchestra has developed an outstanding reputation for adventurous, ambitious programming from Baroque through to genre-crossing contemporary music. LMP has enjoyed a long history of association with many of the world’s finest artists including Sir James Galway, Dame Felicity Lott, Jane Glover, Howard Shelley, Nicola Benedetti, John Suchet and Simon Callow. The orchestra enjoys an international reputation, touring extensively throughout Europe and the Far East.
The London Mozart Players regularly performs on London’s premier concert platforms, including the Royal Festival Hall, St John’s Smith Square and Cadogan Hall as well as cathedrals and other concert venues across the UK. LMP is the resident orchestra at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall and will celebrate this venue’s reopening after refurbishment in 2019 with a gala concert which will also mark the orchestra’s 70th birthday. The orchestra’s anniversary year will see a wide range of concerts in the capital’s top concert venues including performances at Kings Place, Conway Hall and a return to Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. As one of the original pioneers of orchestral outreach work, LMP has enjoyed a host of relationships with schools and music hubs across the UK (and also in Dubai and Hong Kong), working with many teachers and heads of music to inspire the next generation of musicians and music lovers. As well as working with schools, LMP continues its 70-year tradition of promoting young up-and-coming musicians. Nicola Benedetti, Jacqueline du Pré and Jan Pascal Tortelier are just three of many young musical virtuosi championed early in their careers by the orchestra.
The LMP enjoys a special relationship with its audience. The orchestra always tries to break down the ‘fourth’ wall between musicians and audience, and this is achieved in part as the orchestra is self-directed. Many concerts, such as its acclaimed ‘Piano Explored’ series, involves a ‘deconstruction’ of the works on the programme, allowing greater understanding and engagement with the music and with the musicians themselves.

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Nicholas Cleobury (conductor)

Nicky Spence (tenor)

Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. Nicky has recorded prolifically and won both the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and Gramophone's Solo Vocal Award for his recording of Janáček's 'The Diary of One Who Disappeared' with Julius Drake. Other solo recordings include recital discs with Malcolm Martineau for Chandos and Resonus, and Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles for Hyperion and...
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Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. Nicky has recorded prolifically and won both the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and Gramophone's Solo Vocal Award for his recording of Janáček's 'The Diary of One Who Disappeared' with Julius Drake. Other solo recordings include recital discs with Malcolm Martineau for Chandos and Resonus, and Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles for Hyperion and his discography ranges from Handel and Mozart to Wagner, Brahms, Britten, Dove and Turnage. He has sung operatic roles at London’s Royal Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Staatsoper, Opera national de Paris, Madrid's Teatro Real, La Monnaie and the Glyndebourne Festival.
Nicky Spence's unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the GSMD and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. He has recorded prolifically and won both the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award and Gramophone's Solo Vocal Award for his recording of Janáček's 'The Diary of One Who Disappeared' with Julius Drake. Other solo recordings include recital discs with Malcolm Martineau for Chandos and Resonus, and Strauss lieder with Roger Vignoles for Hyperion and his discography ranges from Handel and Mozart to Wagner, Brahms, Britten, Dove and Turnage. He has sung operatic roles at London’s Royal Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Staatsoper, Opera national de Paris, Madrid's Teatro Real, La Monnaie and the Glyndebourne Festival.

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Melvyn Tan (piano)

Exploration, insight and imagination are vital ingredients in Melvyn Tan’s blend of artistic attributes. He established his international reputation with pioneering performances on fortepiano and continues to cast fresh light on music conceived for the piano’s early and modern forms in a broad repertoire from Bach to Messiaen and many contemporary commissions.   Melvyn’s work in recital, chamber music and as a concerto soloist has been heard at many of the world’s leading concert halls, from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, AMUZ in Brussels, London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, and at major festivals in Tokyo, Salzburg, Edinburgh, San Francisco, La Roque d’Anthéron as well as Bath, the City of London and North Norfolk. As a concerto soloist...
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Exploration, insight and imagination are vital ingredients in Melvyn Tan’s blend of artistic attributes. He established his international reputation with pioneering performances on fortepiano and continues to cast fresh light on music conceived for the piano’s early and modern forms in a broad repertoire from Bach to Messiaen and many contemporary commissions.

Melvyn’s work in recital, chamber music and as a concerto soloist has been heard at many of the world’s leading concert halls, from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, AMUZ in Brussels, London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, and at major festivals in Tokyo, Salzburg, Edinburgh, San Francisco, La Roque d’Anthéron as well as Bath, the City of London and North Norfolk.

As a concerto soloist Melvyn has performed with ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Salzburg’s Camerata and Mozarteum Orchestras, Bruckner Orchestra Linz, Melbourne Symphony, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, and Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Melvyn has connected with audiences across China and Southeast Asia, introducing many to their first experience of fortepiano and attracting young people to attend recitals on both the early and the modern piano. Others have discovered his work through his large discography, complete with ground-breaking fortepiano recordings of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert for EMI Classics, and releases on the Archiv, Deux-Elles, Harmonia Mundi, NMC and Virgin Classics labels. His 2019 recording, ‘Miroirs’ (Onyx Classics) embraces three centuries of keyboard style and traces some of the inspirations for Ravel’s ground-breaking works for piano, hailed by The Times as a “fascinating disc”. On his CD of Beethoven, Czerny and Liszt – ‘Master and Pupil’ (Onyx Classics 2016), The Sunday Times commented that “The progression is from marvelousness to absolute delectation. His playing is always exquisite, but much more than that.” This 2024 release rounds off his discography of the Beethoven concerti, sonatas and smaller works.

Recent orchestral appearances include performances with MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Filharmonie Brno (with Dennis Russell Davies), Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Wiener Akademie, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck and the Singapore re:SOUND Collective. Recital and chamber music highlights include Wigmore Hall, AMUZ, Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, Oundle International Festival, and a symposium in Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

With curator Paul Boucher, he continues his role in devising Music and Word, a musical collaboration with narrators including Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Harriet Walter, Sir Derek Jacobi and Alex Lawther within the unique setting of Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex, made famous by the Bloomsbury Group.

In addition to his concert and recording activities, Melvyn Tan gives masterclasses and is a regular adjudicator. He is also a keen and long-standing supporter of Buskaid, the outstanding South African music project in a Soweto township, listed by Gramophone Magazine as one of the world’s ten most inspiring orchestras.


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Composer(s)

Jonathan Dove

JONATHAN DOVE is the most performed living opera composer in the UK. His over 30 works in this genre come in all shapes and sizes and form the backbone to his considerable oeuvre, many of which have also been performed in Europe, America and Australia. Much of his other music is palpably narrative and dramatic in conception, and covers a great range of subject matter, from contemporary to legendary, fairy-tale to sexual politics, catering to all audiences from children to adult. Hailing from a family of architects, Dove was playing the organ in his local church at the age of twelve, and read Music at Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway. Graduating from the music staff at Glyndebourne, he first gained prominence with his chamber versions of operas, including The Magic Flute, The Ring...
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JONATHAN DOVE is the most performed living opera composer in the UK. His over 30 works in this genre come in all shapes and sizes and form the backbone to his considerable oeuvre, many of which have also been performed in Europe, America and Australia. Much of his other music is palpably narrative and dramatic in conception, and covers a great range of subject matter, from contemporary to legendary, fairy-tale to sexual politics, catering to all audiences from children to adult.
Hailing from a family of architects, Dove was playing the organ in his local church at the age of twelve, and read Music at Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway. Graduating from the music staff at Glyndebourne, he first gained prominence with his chamber versions of operas, including The Magic Flute, The Ring of the Nibelung, and The Cunning Little Vixen for Birmingham Opera ’s touring productions, then became music advisor at the Almeida Theatre in North London, writing a plethora of theatre scores for them, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001-6.
Awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to music, he has also won the 2008 Ivor Novello Award, the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society education award and four British Composer Awards. His 1998 Glyndebourne commission opera Flight has received 40 productions worldwide, and his television opera When She Died was seen by 2.5 million viewers.
He has written extensively in many genres, he is a prolific and popular choral composer, has orchestral works to his credit, several oratorios, many song cycles and much chamber music, including four string quartets.
Recent and forthcoming works include operas Marx in London (2018), Itch (2023), and forthcoming Im 80 Tagen um die Welt (Zürich, 2024) and Uprising, for Glyndebourne (2025), Northern Lights - an accordion concerto, Gaspard’s Foxtrot and Gaspard’s Christmas for narrator and orchestra, two song cycles, three string quartets and more.

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Press

Play album Play album
01.
An Airmail Letter from Mozart: Theme & Variation I
03:17
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Melvyn Tan
02.
An Airmail Letter from Mozart: Variations II & III
03:53
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Melvyn Tan
03.
An Airmail Letter from Mozart: Variation IV
02:59
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Melvyn Tan
04.
An Airmail Letter from Mozart: Variations V, VI, VII & VIII
04:54
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Melvyn Tan
05.
For An Unknown Soldier: 1914
04:09
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
06.
For An Unknown Soldier: The Poets are Waiting
01:50
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
07.
For An Unknown Soldier: The Call
03:57
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
08.
For An Unknown Soldier: Women at Munition Making
05:03
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
09.
For An Unknown Soldier: Before Action
06:54
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
10.
For An Unknown Soldier: Dead Man's Dump
12:09
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
11.
For An Unknown Soldier: To His Love
04:38
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
12.
For An Unknown Soldier: The Wind on the Downs
05:37
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
13.
For An Unknown Soldier: An Imperial Elegy
05:59
(Jonathan Dove) London Mozart Players, Nicky Spence, Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir, Oxford Bach Choir
show all tracks

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