Grainger: The Warriors, Danish Folk-music Suite, Hill-songs 1 & 2 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra & Geoffrey Simon

• Percy Grainger (1882 - 1961):
• 1 The Warriors 17:55
• 2 Irish Tune from County Derry 05:26
• 3 Danish Folk-music Suite: I. The Power of Love 03:32
• 4 Danish Folk-music Suite: Ii. Lord Peter's Stable-boy 02:49
• 5 Danish Folk-music Suite: Iii. The Nightingale and the Two Sisters 04:40
• 6 Danish Folk-music Suite: Iv. Jutish Medley 07:49
• 7 Hill-song No. 1 13:10
• 8 Beautiful Fresh Flower 02:34
• 9 Colleen Dhas 03:05
• 10 Hill-song No. 2 04:47
• Total Runtime 01:05:47

Info for Grainger: The Warriors, Danish Folk-music Suite, Hill-songs 1 & 2

Percy Grainger was one of the great originals of 20th century music. Australian-born, he studied with his mother while a boy and later went to Germany where his career as a virtuoso pianist began. As a composer he was largely self-taught and strongly influenced by the folk music of Great Britain and Ireland, Many of his miniatures-such titles as Country Gardens, Handel in the Strand and Molly on the Shore-established his composing credentials very early on. But Grainger was also an inveterate innovator and experimenter in music, and the kaleidoscopic aspects of his compositional creativity-evident in highly imaginative works often with unprecedented rhythms, harmonies and scoring-are fully represented in the programme heard on this recording. The music was digitally recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in February 1989, at the acoustically excellent South Melbourne Town Hall. The album was originally released in Australia by ABC Classics and elsewhere by Koch International. Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players and English Chamber Orchestra.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Geoffrey Simon, conductor

Geoffrey Simon
Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players and English Chamber Orchestra.

Internationally, he has appeared with the Adelaide, Atlanta, Bournemouth, Canberra, City of Birmingham, Fort Worth, Melbourne, Milwaukee, Queensland, Sapporo, Shanghai, St Louis, Sydney, Tasmanian, Vermont and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the Israel, Moscow, Munich and New Japan Philharmonic Orchestras, the American Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and the Australian Opera.

His music directorships have included the Albany Symphony Orchestra (New York), the Australian Sinfonia (London), the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (Indiana), the Orquestra Simfònica de Balears 'Ciutat de Palma' (Majorca) and the Sacramento Symphony (California). With the Palma Orchestra he conducted Paul Patterson’s Te Deum for the King and Queen of Spain, and with the Sacramento Symphony he created the World View series of concerts, attracting audiences from twenty non-European cultures.

Geoffrey Simon is Music Director Emeritus of the Northwest Mahler Orchestra in Seattle, with which he has conducted the Mahler symphonic cycle and Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. He is Consultant for Classical Special Projects for Arts Global (a foundation for emerging artists, London, Montreux and New York) and has served as a jury member for Young Concert Artists, PianoTexas, Australian Cello Awards and Royal Over-Seas League.

Geoffrey Simon was a student of Herbert von Karajan, Rudolf Kempe, Hans Swarowsky and Igor Markevich, and a major prize-winner at the first John Player International Conductors’ Award. He has made forty six recordings for a number of labels, combining discoveries with familiar works by Tchaikovsky, Respighi, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Smetana, Bloch, Grainger, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Les Six. Amongst the contemporary composers he has recorded are Barry Conyngham, John Downey, Paul Patterson and Zhou Long.

Booklet for Grainger: The Warriors, Danish Folk-music Suite, Hill-songs 1 & 2