At 25 discs for 99.98, I doubt there is more listening pleasure per dollar to be found anywhere else! Holst’s Planets, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Vaughan William’s Fantasia’s on a theme of Thomas Tallis and Greensleeves, Percy Grainger’s Country Gardens, Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the orchestra, Malcolm Arnold’s Dances, are these works of interest? They are all here along with practically every other well known and loved non-symphonic work of the British pastoral school by Delius, Bax, Finzi and others…all the ones that you know, and so many that you didn’t even know you knew.

SELECT REVIEWS OF SOME OF THE INDIVIDUAL DISCS:

Britten: Bridge Variations, Etc / Bedford, English Co -- These performances of the Frank Bridge Variations and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Steuart Bedford stand among the very few that compare to the composer's own classic Decca recordings, and they feature better sonics...this is Britten at his best, in every respect, and a first-rate bargain to boot.

Elgar: Marches / Judd, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra -- Nearly 80 minutes of Elgar played very well...Frankly, you can have your Boults and Barbirollis: compared to Judd they sound far less involved...The sonics are also quite good...another successful collaboration between Judd and the New Zealanders--long may they continue.

Rawsthorne: Cello Concerto, Etc / Baillie, Rancourt, Et Al -- Once again Naxos pulls a rabbit out of its hat with this gorgeous release of Alan Rawsthorne's music… every performance element here is in place and the sound quality is superior. If you're new to Rawsthorne, there is no better introduction to his music than the Symphonic Studies. This is a real find.

Bax: Symphonic Poems / Lloyd-jones -- Drawn from David Lloyd-Jones' excellent set of Bax symphony recordings...The engineering complements the performances, having fine clarity and impact. If you're in the market for a single disc of Bax tone poems, or even a single disc of Bax, then this one certainly fills the bill.

Britten: Piano Concerto, Etc / Macgregor, Bedford, Et Al -- This is probably the finest version of the Britten Piano Concerto available...Joanna MacGregor knows this work and plays it beautifully...aided in no small degree by Bedford's alertness and the absolutely first-class sonics...The couplings, both rarities, are just as brilliantly played...I couldn't be happier that Naxos has been reissuing these excellent Collins Classics Britten recordings. They were and remain marvelous, almost as interpretively commanding as the composer's own, and they deserve a long life.

For more details and reviews of some of the individual discs in this set Click Here.

British Orchestral Collection

A gap of some two hundred years exists between the career of composer Henry Purcell in the late 17th century and that of Edward Elgar, whose earliest successes came at the tail end of the 19th century. In this period, with the possible exception of William Boyce in the classical era and the light opera titans Gilbert & Sullivan in the late 1800s, no British composer enjoyed international stature on par with the best-known composers on the Continent.

The fate of English music changed at the dawn of the Edwardian era when Edward Elgar penned his entirely original Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius, followed by a series of four Pomp and Circumstance Marches, some of the most memorable music ever written for band. Ralph Vaughan Williams cut an impressive figure in the 20th century’s first half. The first truly great British symphonist, his works employ folk materials which he collected scrupulously, primarily in his earlier years. His Fantasia on Greensleeves, to name but one work, is a sublime example of the English pastoral tradition married to folksong. The reclusive Frederick Delius spent much of his life in Florida and rural France. Most of his orchestral works are short and impressionistic, always tightly controlled and displaying a keen sense of color.

One of the most recognizable orchestral works in the canon, The Planets of Gustav Holst introduced a massive orchestra and a bold style that can feel at odds with the composer’s more typical style, rooted in a more-restrained English pastoralism. Nonetheless, the thrilling piece is deservedly popular. The often-overlooked Gerald Finzi wrote in a tuneful, lyrical idiom as did Ernest John Moeran, whose Symphony in G Minor is a neglected gem from between the wars. William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast is the most important oratorio in England since Elgar’s essay in the genre and further cemented the composer’s reputation as one of the nation’s leading composers. The renaissance of English orchestral music in the 20th century continued with the symphonies, concertos and works of Arnold Bax, Malcolm Arnold and Alan Rawsthorne, as well as the original canon of Australian-born Percy Grainger, an exhaustive compiler of folk songs throughout the English-speaking world, as well as an enormously gifted composer and arranger.

As his progressive tone poems give evidence, Frank Bridge was a composer of considerable talent. In his student Benjamin Britten, one of England’s most original musical personalities emerged in the years around World War II, notably after the production of his opera Peter Grimes at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 1945, an auspicious date in British music history. Grimes became the most successful English-language opera of all time, and Britten enjoyed a fruitful career as an opera composer with a natural sympathy for the voice, employing a completely original harmonic vocabulary. His Sinfonia da Requiem is one of his early orchestral masterworks from his time spent in New York, where the composer lived in opposition to the war. His near contemporary, Michael Tippett, also a pacifist, is best represented by his moving oratorio A Child of our Time, a stirring protest against oppression and tyranny.

- Sean Hickey

SEE ALSO, the complete series of Exclusive Gift Sets from Naxos on ArkivMusic!