Sola: Music for Viola by Women Composers Rosalind Ventris

• Grażyna Bacewicz (1909 - 1969): Kaprys Polski:
• 1 Bacewicz: Kaprys Polski 03:10
• Lillian Fuchs (1901 - 1995): Sonata Pastorale:
• 2 Fuchs: Sonata Pastorale: I. Fantasia 04:34
• 3 Fuchs: Sonata Pastorale: II. Pastorale 07:22
• Amanda Feery (b. 1984): Boreal:
• 4 Feery: Boreal 07:11
• Sally Beamish (b. 1956): Penillion:
• 5 Beamish: Penillion 06:27
• Elisabeth Lutyens (1906 - 1983): Echo of the Wind, Op. 157:
• 6 Lutyens: Echo of the Wind, Op. 157 07:39
• Elizabeth Maconchy (1907 - 1994): Five Sketches:
• 7 Maconchy: Five Sketches: I. Molto moderato – Più mosso 01:51
• 8 Maconchy: Five Sketches: II. Allegro deciso – Meno mosso 02:21
• 9 Maconchy: Five Sketches: III. Andantino 02:07
• 10 Maconchy: Five Sketches: IV. Poco lento 02:59
• 11 Maconchy: Five Sketches: IV. Presto 01:40
• Imogen Holst (1907 - 1994): Suite for Viola:
• 12 Holst: Suite for Viola: I. Prelude 03:07
• 13 Holst: Suite for Viola: II. Cinquepace 02:13
• 14 Holst: Suite for Viola: III. Saraband 03:34
• 15 Holst: Suite for Viola: IV. Gigue 01:45
• Thea Musgrave (b. 1928): In the Still of the Night:
• 16 Musgrave: In the Still of the Night 04:56
• Light at the End of the Tunnel:
• 17 Musgrave: Light at the End of the Tunnel 01:34
• Total Runtime 01:04:30

Info for Sola: Music for Viola by Women Composers

Rosalind Ventris’s debut solo album features a selection of music for unacccompanied viola composed between 1930 (Imogen Holst’s impressive Suite for Viola) and the present day (a 2020 lockdown miniature by Thea Musgrave).

The largely British and Irish programme allows Ventris to revive substantial works by important yet still often overlooked twentieth-century composers – not only Holst but also Lillian Fuchs, Elizabeth Maconchy, Elisabeth Lutyens and Grażyna Bacewicz – alongside more recent additions to the repertoire from Musgrave, Sally Beamish and Amanda Feery.

With several of the composers themselves professional string players, this is, in Ventris’s words, ‘wonderful music – that just happens to be by women composers’.

"The viola is not always thought of as a solitary instrument, if we hear it in recital it is usually with other instrumentalists, but here Rosalind Ventris showed that the instrument’s rich elegiac lower tones and singing higher register can make a really expressive protagonist..." (Robert Hugill)

Rosalind Ventris, viola

Rosalind Ventris
leads an international career as a soloist and chamber musician. As a recitalist, she has performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, Purcell Room, Bozar, Flagey, Slovak Philharmonic, Aldeburgh Festival and Het Concertgebouw. As a concerto soloist, she has worked with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, London Mozart Players, l’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie and the Belgian National Orchestra. Rosalind’s debut album, featuring music by leading women composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, will be released on Delphian Records in January 2023.

As a chamber musician, Rosalind frequently performs as part of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Associate Ensemble of the Wigmore Hall), and is the violist of flute, viola and harp ensemble Trio Anima. She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Mitsuko Uchida, Tabea Zimmermann, the Nash Ensemble, the Arcanto Quartett, the Endellion Quartet, the Marmen Quartet, Barry Douglas, John O’Conor, Gerhard Schultz and the Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio. She has been invited to perform at many prestigious festivals internationally, including the West Cork, Marlboro, Salzburg and Båstad Festivals, IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, and venues such as the Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, and the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn.

Praised for her ‘beguiling’ and ‘characterful’ playing (Gramophone), recordings featuring Rosalind as a chamber musician have received favourable reviews in the national and international press. She has recorded for Delphian, Chandos, Signum, Tŷ Cerdd and Navona record labels, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, RTÉ Lyric FM, and NPO Radio 4. Rosalind also enjoys contemporary music collaborations, having performed alongside composers Garth Knox and Sally Beamish. As a former founder member of the Albion Quartet she recorded Richard Blackford’s Kalon with the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum (Prague). She has also premiered several works by Edwin Roxburgh, and in 2016 Rosalind recorded a new work for clarinet, viola and piano by Rory Boyle for Delphian Records. Rory Boyle has also written a work for Trio Anima, premiered in London in 2019.

Rosalind is the Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford, and is a Professor of Viola at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She is also one of the Artistic Directors of the Cowbridge Music Festival in Wales.

This album contains no booklet.