Smyth: Mass in D Major & Overture to "The Wreckers" The BBC Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo

• Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944): The Wreckers:
• 1The Wreckers: Overture09:14
• Mass in D Major:
• 2Mass in D Major: I. Kyrie eleison09:01
• 3Mass in D Major: III. Credo17:00
• 4Mass in D Major: IV. Sanctus04:33
• 5Mass in D Major: V. Benedictus06:00
• 6Mass in D Major: VI. Agnus Dei07:34
• 7Mass in D Major: II. Gloria16:37
• Total Runtime01:09:59

Info for Smyth: Mass in D Major & Overture to "The Wreckers"

Ethel Smyth was one of England’s foremost Victorian composers, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first female composer to be honoured with a Damehood. She studied composition with Carl Reineke in Leipzig (alongside Dvorák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky) and then privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg (who introduced her to Brahms and Clara Schumann). Her Mass in D is her only large-scale religious work, although it was certainly composed for the concert hall rather than the church. Scored for 4 soloists, choir, and orchestra, the Mass in D sets the usual six parts of the mass, but is performed with the Gloria at the end, not second, at the instruction of the composer. Her opera The Wreckers, set in mid-eighteenth-century Cornwall, is considered by some critics to be the ‘most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten’. The Overture sets the scene wonderfully, as well as introducing the main thematic material to follow.

Sakari Oramo and his BBC forces are joined by an outstanding quartet of soloists for this Surround Sound recording.

Susanna Hurrell, soprano
Catriona Morison, mezzo-soprano
Ben Johnson, tenor
Duncan Rock, baritone
BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Sakari Oramo
began his musical career as a violinist, and for some years was leader of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He made his breakthrough as a conductor in 1993, and has since conducted many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras including the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, Dresden Staatskapelle and San Francisco Symphony. Music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1998–2008), he was awarded honorary doctorates by two English universities, the Elgar Medal, the title of Birmingham’s most popular cultural personality and, in 2009, honoured with an OBE for his services to music in the city. Oramo is currently principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2013, after nine years as chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, he took up the same post with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, winning the 2015 Royal Philharmonic Society Conductor of the Year award in recognition of his work with the latter. Between 2004 and 2018 he was principal conductor of the West Coast Kokkola Opera, and between 2013 and 2019 he was artistic director of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. Sakari Oramo appears on a large number of highly praised recordings, primarily as a conductor but also as a violinist and chamber musician.

Booklet for Smyth: Mass in D Major & Overture to "The Wreckers"