World Premiere Release • John Jeffreys - Violin Concerto • Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, Violin. 4K UHD

* Previously unreleased recording. Conductor, Paul Bateman introduces. An audiophile recording *

In Memoriam: John and Pauline Jeffreys. And also of my late father Mick, and mother Maureen, for it was they who gave me a great love of music. I shall ever be grateful to them.

This concerto is exceedingly beautiful, in the idiom of the English Pastoral School: a group of English composers who sought to build a distinctively English style of music through Tudor and English folk music: among them, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, with other notable figures including George Butterworth, John Ireland, Edmund Rubbra, Gerald Finzi, Ernest John Moeran and Peter Warlock.

Background to this Release

Many thanks are owed to conductor Paul Bateman for inspiring the creation of this video; to recording engineer Gary Thomas for providing his superb masters; and to David Good at Goodmusic Publishing for his consent to publish. It is a real privilege to make this outstanding performance and recording available to all those who love English pastoral music - John Jeffreys' in particular - and to those who have not yet discovered it, or him. I hope you enjoy it as much as I.

From Paul Bateman (Conductor) to AntPDC on 17 November 2020:

"I hope one day you'll be able to hear a recording we made of John Jeffreys' Violin Concerto (1951) just after he died. In fact myself and the recording engineer, Gary Thomas, went to the joint funeral of John and his wife Pauline (for whom he wrote the concerto) on the Thursday before the Sunday recording. The orchestra were quite moved by the story and it set a special tone for the recording sessions. The soloist was Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay. It's very special."

John Jeffreys

In an obituary for The Guardian, John Turner wrote: "John Jeffreys, who died in 2010 aged 82, was a multi-talented song composer whose sensitive, gentle settings of English poetry have recently found favour with distinguished singers including Ian Partridge, James Gilchrist and Jonathan Veira. The musical climate in the 1970s was not sympathetic to a composer of such traditional bent, and, disheartened, Jeffreys destroyed much of his work. However, in 1983 he chanced upon four reels of tape recordings made in 1966, and reconstructed most of the songs on them.

As a child, Jeffreys took piano lessons and was a chorister. The family moved to Exeter, instigating his lifelong love of nature and the Devon countryside. The river Exe at Bickleigh later formed the inspiration for a violin concerto, composed in 1951 as a gift for, and first performed by, his wife Pauline Ashley, a fellow student at Trinity College London, where (after national service in the RAF) he studied piano, theory and musical philosophy, and took lessons on the recorder from Edgar Hunt.

In the 1950s and 60s, Jeffreys composed a substantial body of works including a symphony, three violin concertos, a cello concerto, a string quartet and a piano sonata – all later destroyed except for one violin concerto [for his wife, Pauline - featured here] – and some 200 songs, many with string accompaniment. He worked for a spell as a teacher, but finding this uncongenial, he went to work for Tottenham council in north London as a garden designer. Plants and gardening were an abiding interest and in 1974 he published two books, Hardy Plants for Small Gardens and Perennials for Cutting.

His composing career was abruptly terminated by a severe illness in 2005. Earlier this year [2010] a disc featuring some of his orchestral works was issued under the title Idylls and Elegies. Pauline's musical career had been cut short by the onset of multiple sclerosis in her early 20s. She died shortly before him."

John Jeffreys, composer, born 4 December 1927; died 3 September 2010

Images

I took these images in and around the Peak District, Derbyshire, England, including the villages of Ashford-in-the-Water, Great and Little Longstone, Alsop-en-le-Dale, Bradbourne, and Parwich; Bretton Clough; Big Moor above the Chatsworth Estate; the Nine Stones Close Bronze Age stone circle at Harthill Moor; and the Haddon Hall Estate. Nikon DSLRs used with various Nikkor and Sigma lenses.

Performance & Recording

Conductor: Paul Bateman
The Philharmonia Orchestra (leader: Maya Iwabuchi)
Solo violin: Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay
Martin Owen: French Horn
Gordon Hunt: Cor Anglais
Paul Edmund-Davies: Flute
Recording Engineer: Gary Thomas
Venue: Air Lyndhurst Studio, Hampstead, London, 19 September 2010
(P) 2010 Goodmusic Publishing https://www.goodmusicpublishing.co.uk/

Видео World Premiere Release • John Jeffreys - Violin Concerto • Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, Violin. 4K UHD канала AntPDC