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Peter Fender - Orchestral Music

Philharmonia Britannica/Peter Fender

Recorded at All Saints, Tooting
by Simon Vout (0rientis Recording)

PGF001 [CD - 48 mins]

This is a new and special CD on a new label.

The title comes from one of several poems by the composer/conductor's mother, a notable poet who in later life achieved a remarkable legacy at Belper in Derbyshire before her death, settings of three of her poems forming a centre piece of a very personal CD.

The other pieces are nicely varied and make a good sequence, with Canzona 2 dedicated to the people of Japan after their 2011 earthquake: "not a terribly cheerful piece" [PF] and to finish a work with saxophone solo, based on a favourite Christmas carol and with digitally treated words fom 2 Corinthians 8:9 interposed, that possibly conceived in collaboration with sound engineer Simon Vout.

Fender has no truck with modernism; he writes music which he hopes is "accessible to both players and audience but which are also compositionally interesting", and this first CD of his orchestral works fully achieves that objective. The music is recorded to a high standard with his own orchestra which we have welcomed in concert...

Peter Grahame Woolf