Kenneth Woods - conductor
“The charismatic American conductor, Kenneth Woods…”
The Guardian
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Christopher Gunning 2nd Symphony
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
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This week, BBC Radio 3 have presented the world-premiere broadcast of Symphony No. 2 by British composer Christopher Gunning in a performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Kenneth Woods.
Gunning's Second Symphony was recorded in Hoddinott Hall alongside his Tenth and Twelfth Symphonies in April. Radio 3 will broadcast the other two works in September and all three will be released on CD and download by Signum Records on 6 December.
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English Symphony Orchestra to stream Beethoven 5
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Click the pic
to see the complete KW/ESO performance of Beethoven 5.
Premieres Thursday at 7:30
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On Thursday the 18th of July at 7:30 PM GMT +1, the
English Symphony Orchestra
will be premiering the video of their recent performance Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, filmed live at a triumphant performance in Cadogan Hall, London on the 9th of June.
After the premiere, it will be available on-demand via both platforms for a limited time.
Here is what critics had to say about this concert:
"
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony also received one of the best performances I have heard live.
Woods’s fine and sane musicality ensured a genuine performance, full of real intensity and sensitivity within a constant view of powerful onward-momentum throughout, a conception that made this imperishable masterpiece fully hang together...Woods’s Presto tempo in the ultimate coda was breathtaking, urging his players on – to the highest degree of musicianship and uplifting expression."
Robert Matthew-Walker - Classical Source
"It takes
a master conductor
to find new things to say in the most over-exposed music, but this account of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was full of insight and energy....concluding with a Presto of complete conviction and assurance of execution. This was, indeed, special."
Guy Rickards - Musical Opinion
"Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony received a reading as attentive to the smaller detail as to its overall trajectory....The ESO responded with
playing of sustained emotional power.
"
Richard Whitehouse - Arcana F
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More on the ESO at Cadogan Hall
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21st Century Symphony Project continues with Matthew Taylor's Fifth Symphony
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The ESO's recent Cadogan Hall concert also included the world premiere of the third work in the orchestra's acclaimed 21st Century Symphony Project, Matthew Taylor's Fifth Symphony
"Some may consider that things have come to a pretty pass when it takes an American Music Director of a regional English orchestra to conceive of, and bring to fruition, what he has termed the 21st Century Symphony Project, an inspiration of artistry and programme-planning by commissioning, performing and recording no fewer than nine new Symphonies by living composers...we have to thank Kenneth Woods for his innovation, which has already brought forth such a greatly significant work as David Matthews’s Ninth Symphony.
"Now, with Matthew Taylor’s Fifth, we have another... Matthew Taylor’s Fifth Symphony is...that rarely-encountered creative language of intellect, intelligence and deep originality....
a masterwork of genuine symphonic thinking
, given a performance of which any composer would have been thrilled. "
Robert Matthew-Walker - Classical Source
"The ESO responded with playing of sustained emotional power such as carried through this movement’s plangent twin climaxes and on to its resigned coda. Not that there was any lack of commitment earlier – Kenneth Woods having set a suitably headlong tempo for the first movement as left his players unfazed, then characterizing the central intermezzi with regard for their subtly different auras. A fine rendering of a piece which amply reinforces Taylor’s standing as
a symphonist of stature
."
Richard Whitehouse - Arcana FM
"From the onset of Taylor’s opening Allegro—by his own admission, his first essay at a “concise, vigorous sonata-like Allegro”—two things are immediately recognisable: his distinctive musical voice...and
a totally sure sense of symphonic scale
…. The close, however, is magical: a lovely, lyrical passage for the quartet of cellos followed by a single snarl from the trombones."
Guy Rickards - Musical Opinion
Taylor's Fifth Symphony was recorded by Ken and the ESO shortly before the premiere and will be released by Nimbus Records in 2020.
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Five Stars for Ken's Brahms orchestration from Musical Opinion
"There are a number of orchestrations of Brahms piano or chamber works, most notably (perhaps) Rubbra’s of the Handel Variations, Op 24, made in 1938, and Schoenberg’s of the Piano Quartet No 1 in G minor, Op 25, from the previous year. Now the trinity of 1861 masterpieces is completed by conductor, cellist and occasional composer Kenneth Woods’ arrangement of the Piano Quartet No 2....Let me put my head above the parapet straightaway and say that
Woods’ orchestration of the Second Piano Quartet is by a distance the finest of the three
, and the most Brahmsian as well...the Orchestra play with unmitigated delight... a real performance of total conviction. I love it."
Guy Rickards - Musical Opinion
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More Critical Praise for
David Matthews Symphony no. 9, Variations for Strings and Double Concerto
"A remarkable, enjoyable disc, brilliantly performed by Kenneth Woods' English Symphony Orchestra. Buy multiple copies and distribute to the ones you love."
"This is easy music to love, a modern expression of the English pastoral tradition which never descends into easy pastiche."
"Matthews’ euphonious Double Concerto for Violin and Viola is another find, the point at which both soloists imitate nightingale calls quietly magical. "
Graham Rickson - The Arts Desk
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"Some would say the symphony is now a musical outfitters of dead men’s clothes. Matthews contends otherwise in a cycle that has steadily gathered momentum and purpose during the past decade to culminate (for now) in a cogent five movement structure... Dating from 1986, a set of eight variations on a troubled Bach chorale deserves a place in the canon of celebrated English string literature from Purcell through to Elgar, Bridge and Tippett."
Peter Quantrill - Gramophone
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Recording of the Month - MusicWeb International
"Matthews could scarcely imagine that this recent addition to his symphonic canon will receive superior advocacy than that lavished upon it by the indefatigable
Kenneth Woods
and his
English Symphony Orchestra
...this set of Variations amounts to yet another worthy candidate for the burgeoning genre we think of as ‘English String Classics’."
Richard Hanlon - MusicWeb International
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"This is music to hold close and to savour at leisure...
Kenneth Woods, conductor
conducts the sweet serenity that is the English Symphony Orchestra... the narrative reflects something of a thinking man’s struggle to maintain a reasoned equilibrium in a threatened universe...This is a lovely symphony, an altogether personal utterance by a composer who lives and breathes symphonic form, who writes out of love for each and every instrument of the orchestra. Disc of the Week."
Norman Lebrecht - Lebrecht Listens
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Recent Recordings
Click on the cover to see an overview of recent critical response
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