David Matthews
Winter Remembered

William Alwyn
Pastoral Fantasia

John McCabe
Concerto Funebre

Gustav Holst
Lyric Movement

Elizabeth Maconchy
Romance

Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola)

Orchestra Nova
George Vass (conductor)

Recorded at The Colosseum, Town Hall, Watford
31 July – 1 August 2006

The remarkably eloquent playing of soloist Sarah-Jane Bradley illuminates this persuasive programme of music for viola and small orchestra. This is heard in works ranging from the haunted half-lights of Holst’s Lyric Movement and Alwyn’s Pastoral Fantasia on the outbreak of war in 1939, to Maconchy’s Romance, McCabe’s Concerto Funebre and David Matthews’s response to Schubert’s Winterreise, which he called Winter Remembered after a poem by the American John Crowe Ransom. The McCabe is among his earliest works, and has been specially revised for its inclusion here. This is a lovely collection, and George Vass and Orchestra Nova respond to the music with passion, finding a luminous intensity that allows Sarah-Jane Bradley’s plangent viola full reign.

"Sarah-Jane Bradley is the rare kind of viola-player who can make you blush with shame for ever having told a viola joke. In her hands the instrument is passionate, eloquant and wide-ranging in its colours and moods - a long way from the charmless introvert of orchestral lore."
"... the variety, cohesion and purpose Bradley brings, even to a loosley rhapsodic piece like Alwyn's Pastoral Fantasia, make sure the ear is kept involved."
"George Vass and his Orchestra Nova make a highly effective partners for Bradley, and the clear, warm-toned recording does all concerned full justice."
Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine, June 2007

CDLX 7186