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    Gramophone Magazine on Sawyers's Orchestral Works

    “strong personality, genuine substance and warm-hearted integrity…uncommon skill in handling instrumental forces…performed here with thrilling conviction and formidable assurance…by the Orchestra of the Swan under its excellent Principal Guest Conductor Kenneth Woods…Sawyers’s excitingly integrated music marries a generous lyrical impulse to a genuine thematic substance and marvellously invigorating contrapuntal flair… this rewarding collection earns the strongest recommendation”

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    Classical CD Reviews on Schoenberg and Brahms

    every line comes through with exceptional clarity. This gives the piece a new profile, with the complex but now clear counterpoint driving the music and leading the ear through the harmonic web. There is atmosphere here too, and much warmth in the ensemble’s sound, but that is never at the expense of the individual lines...

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    ArtistXite on Gal and Schumann Symphonies

    The final result may be the most compelling reawakening of Schumann in the last decades – and simultaneously a long-overdue vindication of Hans Gál.

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    Words and Music on Bobby and Hans vol 4

    Not one but two Schumann Spring Symphonies hove into earshot. Kenneth Woods and the Orchestra of the Swan versus Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Woods wins it. One needs express no surprise when the committed outfit with its own conductor beats the prestige youngsters under the rising star jet-setter.

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    Gramophone Magazine on Bobby and Hans vol 3

    "... particularly good at controlling tempo changes, so important in the Finale with its ever-increasing speeds heightening the excitement"

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Schoenberg and Brahms on Somm

"Expert, deeply committed live performances" BBC Music Magazine

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Auricolae- Music and Storytelling on Avie

“The music is incidental, illustrative, with lots of opportunities for dissonant, clashing sounds, all intended for performance in schools with no previous exposure to classical music. It’s a matter of appealing narratives, cleverly wrapped in contemporary sounds. Or should that be the other way around?” The Irish Times

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Philip Sawyers- Cello Concerto, Symphony no. 2 and Concertante

A 2014 MusicWeb International Record of the Year

"Sawyers is a composer of real quality which is so pleasing when there is so much mediocrity around. His music is always fascinating in its breadth of ideas as well as its execution as this disc so amply demonstrates. "

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Welcome to the website of Kenneth Woods. Ken is Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra of the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon and cellist of the string trio Ensemble Epomeo.

News-

  • October 9- Ken speaks about the Saint Louis Requiem Protests on WQXR’s Conducting Business

  • October 27- Avie Records Release the latest CD from Ensemble Epomeo, String Trios of Schnittke, Weinberg, Kurtág and Penderecki
  • November 1-10 Ensemble Epomeo make their annual Autumn Tour across the East Coast
  • November 26- Nimbus Records release Wall of Water featuring KW and the English String Orchestra
  • November 30- Ken makes his debut with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra

 

Ken’s blog,  A View From The Podium (one of the 25 most influential music blogs in the world)

Latest posts:

  • Does Music Have a One Percent Problem?
  • Repertoire Report- KW 2014
  • Haydn’s Music, Bathed in Fire and Blood
  • Music Seeks Parallel Lines
  • A False Rationalization
  • Thoughts on the Saint Louis Requiem Protest
  • “Hey buddy! Does that there sarrusophone have a volume knob on it?” or “Can wind players do dynamics?”
  • Facebook Ate My Blog
  • Calling All Recognizers
  • Karajan 25th Anniversary- Music of Debussy, Bartok, Ravel and Tchaikovsky
  • Howard Karp
  • Beethoven and the Big Mac- Art in the Age of Junk Culture
  • Your Children’s Hearing
  • Book of the week- Jimi Hendrix, Starting at Zero
Humor at Vftp: 

  • An SOS from Sinfonia Suburbia
  • A tale of two upbeats
  • BREAKING- Olympic Athletes to Mime Entire 2012 Games
  • BREAKING- Coalition Government to Introduce “Mahler Licensing Scheme” from 2013
  • Obama announces support for exposition repeats in State of the Union address.
  • BREAKING- Major American Orchestra Appoints Bernstein Hologram as new Music Director
Explore the Score:

  • Explore the Score- Schnittke String Trio
  • Explore the Score- Shostakovich (arr. Barshai) Chamber Symphony, opus 110a
  • Explore the Score- Brahms Serenade opus 11 in D major (reconstruction of original version for nonet)
  • Explore the Score- Brahms Symphony no. 4 in E minor
  • Explore the Score- Schönberg Verklärte Nacht
  • Explore the Score- Schumann Symphony no. 1 “Spring”
  • Explore the Score- Hans Gál Symphony no. 1
  • Explore the Score- Hans Gál Symphony no. 2
  • Explore the Score- Bach “Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals” (The Goldberg Variations)
  • Explore the Score- Schumann Symphony in D minor
  • Explore the Score- Prokofiev Classical Symphony
  • Explore the Score: Shostakovich- Symphony no. 5 in D minor
  • Explore the score- Elgar Cello Concerto
Mahler at Vftp

  • You can listen to Ken’s talk about Mahler from the 2013 Proms here (or download as a podcast from the R3 website):
  • If you want to learn more about Mahler, why not start with Ken’s recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. [“This is a most important issue, and all Mahlerians should make its acquisition an urgent necessity.”–International Record Review] Find out more about this disc here, or listen to extracts, here.
  • Read some of Ken’s writings about the Fifth Symphony here, here and here, or explore his entire 30+ part blog series, Mahler- A Performer’s Perspective, here.
  • The Official, Definitive, Ultimate, Real Top Ten Sexiest Moments in the Music of Gustav Mahler
Related searches:
symphony explore schumann listening string
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