Virgin has reissued its 1991 world-premiere recording of Tavener's The Protecting Veil, for cello and strings, along with his Thrinos for solo cello and Britten's Cello Suite No. 3, Op. 87. All are superbly performed by Steven Isserlis, accompanied in The Protecting Veil by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The Protecting Veil is essentially a concerto in which the cello plays almost continuously, although it differs from the traditional concerto, in which the opposition between the ...
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Virgin has reissued its 1991 world-premiere recording of Tavener's The Protecting Veil, for cello and strings, along with his Thrinos for solo cello and Britten's Cello Suite No. 3, Op. 87. All are superbly performed by Steven Isserlis, accompanied in The Protecting Veil by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The Protecting Veil is essentially a concerto in which the cello plays almost continuously, although it differs from the traditional concerto, in which the opposition between the orchestra and the soloist heightens the musical drama. In The Protecting Veil, conflict and drama are minimized; the solo cello is a serene, meditative voice, sometimes floating, sometimes soaring over the entirely supportive accompaniment of the orchestra. While it is idiomatically far removed from the works of Messiaen, its sense of ecstasy lost in timelessness and its supreme indifference to western conventions of musical development reveal Tavener to be a spiritual cousin of the French...
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