“The charismatic American conductor, Kenneth Woods…”

Ken's Autumn 2020 Newsletter

English Symphony Orchestra's Music from Wyastone series continues with Visions of Childhood Premieres 16 October at 7:30 BST and is free to view for 4 days Click here for details and to listen Erwin Stein's chamber version of Das himmlishce Leben (The Heavenly Life), the finale of Mahler's Fourth Symphony, served as creative point of departure and the musical point of arrival for this fascinating programme of works by Schubert, Wagner, Mahler and Humperdinck in new orchestrations by Kenneth Woods for the same forces used by Stein 100 years ago. Woods and the ESO launched the Music from Wyastone series in September with a performance of James Ledger's chamber version of Strauss's Four Last Songs performed by Affiliate Artist, April Fredrick. "...promises to be a rewarding series, and one which looks set to reaffirm the significance of the ESO within the context of British music-making." Richard Whitehouse - Arcana.FM "The orchestral accompaniment was even more delicate than we are accustomed to hearing in the original but I felt the sound was sufficiently full (Ledger seems to use the piano to fill in some of the missing texture). There was a palpable sense of ecstasy in April Fredrick’s account of this song...This was a very fine account of Strauss’s last gift to the soprano voice. We had a lovely singer to whom the opportunity to perform the songs again clearly meant a great deal; we had a conductor who directed with skill and empathy; and we had 13 players who did full justice to a very successful reduced scoring." John Quinn - SeenAndHeard International

BBC Radio 3 to Broadcast Ken's new recording of Matthew Taylor's Fourth Symphony with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Tuesday 13 October c. 3:35 PM UK Time Click here for details and to listen Recorded in Cardiff's Hoddinott Hall in January, Matthew Taylor's Fourth Symphony will be released on CD/streaming by Nimbus Alliance Records on 6 November The disc also includes Taylor's Fifth Symphony, premiered and recorded by the English Symphony Orchestra in 2019 as part of the 21st Century Symphony Project, a multi-year commitment to commission, premiere and record at least nine new symphonies by nine of today's most outstanding composers. "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 characterising 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 "I regard Matthew Taylor’s new piece to be a masterwork of genuine symphonic thinking, given a performance of which any composer would have been thrilled." Robert Matthew-Walker - Classical Source

Critical Praise for Ken's latest CD Learn more here. Five Stars. “Philip Sawyers’ standing as one of the most compelling symphonic composers to emerge in recent years owes much to the determined advocacy of conductor Kenneth Woods…the Symphony is a thrilling exercise in orchestral colour cast in three tightly integrated movements. Hommage to Kandinsky may well be Sawyers’ masterpiece. Emboldened by enlarged orchestral forces, it carries itself with a glowing elemental force worked out in vivid writing as bracing as it is baleful, as powerful as it is poetic. Woods’ corralling of the superbly engineered, firing-on-all-cylinders BBC National Orchestra of Wales – playing with telling sweep and detail – serves Sawyers’ music throughout with illuminating, note-perfect brilliance.” Michael Quinn, Limelight Magazine “The emergence of Sawyers as a major symphonist of his generation has been among the more significant aspects of latter-day British music…. impressively assured readings by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Kenneth Woods… It will be fascinating to hear just where Sawyers goes from here on his eventful symphonic odyssey.” Richard Whitehouse, Arcana FM  “The eagerly awaited Fourth (2018) is in three movements, structured not unlike Bruckner’s Ninth (or even Harold Truscott’s solitary Symphony): a highly dramatic opening Moderato in B flat followed by a fleet-footed Presto scherzo in F which reworks – even reinvents – material from the first span, and a sombre but ultimately luminous and serene concluding Adagio in D minor, again with thematic cross-connections to the preceding movements (and some other Sawyers scores). Just as vital to the musical and expressive flow, however, is his orchestration, beautifully realised here by the BBC NOW and Sawyers’s champion, Kenneth Woods… Hommage to Kandinsky is a terrifically vivid and, again, brilliantly orchestrated score…The performance is again wonderfully realised, the orchestra relishing the many opportunities to shine. Praise, too, for the technical engineering by Simon Fox-Gál.” Guy Rickards, Gramophone

Other recent highlights Ken was one of the first conductors to join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales after lockdown in September for a studio performance of the Stravinsky Octet for Winds, which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in November In September, Ken and the ESO recorded and filmed several works for the orchestra's Music from Wyastone series. Adrian Williams is the orchestra's current Composer-in-Association, the orchestra recorded his impressive work for 22 solo strings, Migrations. The orchestra also performed David Matthews' acclaimed orchestration of the Elgar String Quartet for a forthcoming Lyrita CD. The Quartet will be coupled with a set of new arrangements by Donald Fraser of beloved Elgar miniatures for cello and strings with soloist Raphael Wallfisch. Finally, the orchestra also recorded Ken's arrangement of the Viktor Ullmann Third String Quartet. In October, Ken and the ESO made first recordings of five works by Steven R. Gerber, the leading American composer who died in 2015. Ken's advocacy of the composer Philip Sawyers was highlighted in a major feature article on the man hailed as "a modern major symphonist" in the current edition of Musical Opinion. On October 3rd, Ken was a featured guest on the Mahler Foundation's series, The Mahler Hour, where he discussed the ESO's upcoming Visions of Childhood project. You can watch his conversation with musicologist Morten Solvik here:

Recent Recordings Click on the cover to see an overview of recent critical response

Kenneth Woods is Artistic Director and Conductor of the:

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