Szymanowski: Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 & Love Songs of Hafiz Ben Johnson, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus & Edward Gardner

• Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937): Symphony No. 3, Op. 27 "The Song of the Night":
• 1Szymanowski: Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, "The Song of the Night": I. Moderato assai08:27
• 2Szymanowski: Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, "The Song of the Night": II. Allegretto tranquillo07:08
• 3Szymanowski: Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, "The Song of the Night": III. Largo10:25
• Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26:
• 4Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: I. Wünsche01:31
• 5Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: II. Der verliebte Ostwind01:49
• 6Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: III. Tanz01:48
• 7Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: IV. Die Perlen meiner Seele01:40
• 8Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: V. Jugend im Alter02:47
• 9Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: VI. Deine Stimme02:50
• 10Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: VII. Trinklied02:35
• 11Szymanowski: Love Songs of Hafiz, Op. 26: VIII. Das Grab des Hafis06:05
• Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 15:
• 12Szymanowski: Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 15: I. Allegro moderato09:59
• 13Szymanowski: Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 15: III. Finale. Allegretto con moto08:52
• Total Runtime01:05:56

Info for Szymanowski: Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 & Love Songs of Hafiz

Edward Gardner returns with the BBC Symphony Orchestra to the intoxicating orchestral music of Karol Szymanowski in their third disc devoted to the composer. Their previous releases have been widely praised, Gardner being described in BBC Music Magazine as one of the finest non-Polish interpreters of Szymanowski.' Ben Johnson, a tenor whose star is rapidly rising, joins Gardner and the BBC SO here as a soloist in two works.

Szymanowski's Symphony No. 1 was composed in 1907 while he was still in his twenties. Stylistically it belongs to his early period, heavily influenced by the late-Romantic style of Wagner and Strauss. It was disavowed later in life as Szymanowski rejected his early influences but its brash youthful energy and intense emotion has won many audiences over.

The exquisite Love Songs of Hafiz for tenor soloist and orchestra are transitional works. Composed in 1911, they represent a move toward his middle period marked by a fascination with oriental themes, here reflected in the choice to set 14th Century Persian poetry.

Szymanowski's Symphony No. 3 Song of the Night' is considered the apex of his middle-period output and one of his finest works. Scored for a huge orchestra with choir and tenor soloist, Szymanowski again sets Persian poetry, here celebrating the beauty of the starlight Eastern night. Szymanowski conveys the poem's vision with sensuous and highly emotional music, scored in extraordinarily subtle orchestral colour.

"Symphony no.3 benefit greatly from Chandos's typically airy acoustic and Edward Gardner's unindulgent but still atmospheric balancing of elements, with voices treated as just one of many elements,with voices treated as just one of many elements in a balanced sound picture." (Gramophone)

"Performances are comparably distinguished, the sound quality a cut above anything obtainable elsewhere." (IRR)

"Even though recordings of Szymanowski symphonies have proliferated recently, this recording stands out when it comes to the ugly duckling First; the composer himself may have been unconvinved by it, yet Gardner conducts with such conviction that it is impossible not to find beauty in its potentially dense Reger-meets-Scriabin soundworld." (BBC Music Magazine)

Ben Johnson, tenor
BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor

Ben Johnson
was born in Llandudno, Wales, in 1946. He studied at the Royal College of Art and has lived and worked in London since 1965.

His first solo exhibition was at the Wickesham Gallery, New York, in 1969 immediately after graduating from the Royal College. He is best known for his paintings based on architectural spaces (some almost forensically accurate, others heavily manipulated) and his large-scale, intricately detailed cityscape paintings, which include panoramas of Hong Kong, Zürich, Jerusalem, Liverpool and, most recently, his view of London which was completed as part of a residency at the National Gallery, London, in 2010.

Over the past 46 years he has exhibited widely in galleries and museums across the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; the Art Institute of Chicago; Kunsthalle Tübingen; and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. At the first Venice Architecture Biennale in 1991, Norman Foster portrayed his work solely through Johnson's images and he included him again in his installation there in 2012. His work was part of a travelling exhibition which toured museums in Europe from 2012 - 2017 with several venues achieving record visitor numbers, and the first retrospective exhibition of his paintings opened in September 2015 at the Southampton City Museum and Art Gallery. Johnson has for years been an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects for his contribution to the public’s understanding of contemporary architecture and, in 2015, was made an Honorary Fellow of Glyndwr University, Wales, for services to the public appreciation of the Arts. In 2017 he was made a Member of the Royal Cambrian Academy in Wales.

He has undertaken commissions for the Royal Institute of British Architects, the British Museum and National Museums Liverpool as well as for IBM, HSBC, JP Morgan, British Steel, Hong Kong Telecommunications and many others.

His work is included in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Regional Services Museum, Hong Kong; and the Government Art Collection.

Booklet for Szymanowski: Symphonies Nos. 1, 3 & Love Songs of Hafiz