Sir Granville Bantock - Old English Suite - (1/2)

Sir Granville Bantok composed this Suite as a tribute to the "orchestra arrangements of music from the golden age of Queen Elizabeth I and her immediate successor". The Suite was composed in 1909 and is neo-Baroque/neo-Classical in feel but influenced enough by Bantock to feel inventively new. Bantock composed each piece based upon a specific piece by a composer and that was that. But more than just a re-orchestration or a transcription, he created a new piece with the theme from the originals held strongly within. Aside from being an accomplished, if somewhat and unfortunately unknown, composer Bantock followed Edward Elgar, a close friend of his, as the Peyton Professor of Music as well the principal of the Birmingham and Midland School of Music in 1908. There he institued some "strange" concepts by requiring literature, mathematics and the languages in the courseload of students; a true Renaissance man, to say the least... He would earn his knighthood in 1930, joining his friend Elgar in the honor. Here are the 1st and 2nd movements from The Old English Suite. Fantasia is based upon the work by Orlando Gibbons and Seven Tears of a Sorrowful Soul is from John Dowland's Lachrymae Pavans. The performance is by the Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra (Kosice) with Adrian Leaper at the helm. Enjoy!