From the age of ten, Benjamin Frith studied with Fanny Waterman, and at the age of fourteen he won the National Concerto Competition in Dudley. He then studied at Leeds University where he gained a first class degree in music, won second place in the Mozart Memorial Prize and joint second prize with Predrag Muzijevic at the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, the year that the first prize was not awarded. Frith’s career took off when he won not only the gold medal, but also the chamber music prize at the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Israel. He has appeared at many festivals including those at Harrogate, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh and King’s Lynn, and he now also teaches piano at the Royal Northern College of Music where he is on the faculty.

Frith has recorded the complete piano music of Malcolm Arnold for Koch and Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations Op. 120 for ASV. However, he now records for Naxos, and on this label has recorded the complete piano music of Mendelssohn, including the concertos (that for two pianos with Hugh Tinney); piano concertos and nocturnes of John Field, and other works by Weber, Rachmaninov, and Schumann.

Frith’s playing has clarity and a tone suited to music of the early Romantics and is ideal for Mendelssohn, Weber and Field. His interpretation of Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso Op. 14 shows an understanding of the style and sound of the composer’s world, and he is able to achieve a very light touch on a modern piano. An early disc of Schumann includes the Fantasiestücke Op. 12 where Frith’s rubato can sometimes sound self-conscious and pre-meditated. In the Field nocturnes Frith makes clear their place in the lineage of Chopin’s masterpieces in this form.

Frith also works as a duo pianist with Peter Hill and has recorded works for two pianos by Stravinsky, including The Rite of Spring, the Sonata and the Concerto for Two Solo Pianos. Frith has also received great critical acclaim for his recordings and performances of Messiaen with Hill. Their reputation is already high, and a recital at Cardiff University in February 2003 prompted Rian Evans to write: ‘The partnership of Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith is a formidable one. The recordings are authoritative and the impact of their live performance is extraordinary. This was a dazzling display of both technical and intellectual brilliance.’ Of the performance of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen Evans stated, ‘…it was the florid rhythmic exuberance and cumulative force of Messiaen’s impassioned testimonies to the divine power that made this so compelling.’

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).

Formed in 1935, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is Scotland’s national broadcasting orchestra and performs to audiences in venues throughout the country. It has been at the heart of the nation’s cultural life for many years and has a wellearned reputation for its creative ambition, its pioneering spirit and diversity of repertoire.

It maintains a busy schedule of broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Television and Online. Based at City Halls in Glasgow, the orchestra is Scotland’s leading champion of new music, and has established strong links with local communities through its learning and outreach programme.

It appears regularly at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival. In recent years the orchestra has toured to Japan, India, South America, China, Holland, Germany and Austria. The orchestra is a past recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Orchestra and its commercial recordings have received a number of prizes, including four Gramophone Awards.

For further information, please visit www.bbc.co.uk/bbcsso.

Photo: John Wood

George Hurst was born in 1926 in Edinburgh of Russian and Romanian parentage and won early distinction in Canada as a composer while a student at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. At the age of 21 he was appointed professor of composition at the Peabody Institute of Baltimore and from 1950 to 1955 was concurrently conductor of the Peabody Conservatory Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of York, Pennsylvania, studying during this period with Pierre Monteux. Encouraged by Myra Hess to return to England, he made his London début in 1953 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he served as Assistant Conductor until his appointment as Principal Conductor of the BBC Northern Orchestra, now the BBC Philharmonic, a position he held from 1958 for some ten years. He served as artistic adviser from1968 to 1974 to the Western Orchestral Society, which controls the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Bournemouth Sinfonietta. George Hurst has conducted all the major orchestras of the united Kingdom and Ireland, serving as principal conductor from 1990 to 1993 of the newly reconstituted National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and has made guest appearances with many of the most distinguished orchestras of Europe.

Michael Tippett was born in London and studied music at the Royal College before embarking on an early career as a composer, supported by work with the orchestra and choir of Morley College in South London, tasks that he found socially relevant. His idiosyncratic style developed relatively slowly, flowering in a series of remarkable operas for which he provided his own libretti. Public recognition came with a knighthood in 1966 and appointment as a Companion of Honour in 1979.

Operas
Tippett’s first important opera, The Midsummer Marriage, was staged at Covent Garden in 1955. It was followed six years later by King Priam, then The Knot Garden in 1970 and The Ice Break in 1977, all of them, in one way or another, exploring a world illuminated by Jungian theories of psychology.

Orchestral Music
Well-known orchestral music includes a Concerto for Double String Orchestra, a Triple Concerto, Little Music for Strings and a Fantasia concertante on a Theme of Corelli, as well as four symphonies. Tippett’s debt to English tradition is heard in his Divertimento on Sellinger’s Round, using an Elizabethan melody.

Choral and Vocal Music
Tippett’s A Child of Our Time seemed highly relevant to the state of the world at the time of its completion in 1941. Other remarkable and moving choral works include The Vision of St Augustine, completed in 1965. Among solo songs and song cycles, The Heart’s Assurance, setting poems by Sidney Keyes and Alun Lewis, is of central importance.

Chamber and Keyboard Music
Tippett’s chamber music includes four string quartets that reflect developments in his style, with four piano sonatas spanning a period from 1938 to 1984.