Laura van der Heijden, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Ryan Wigglesworth - Earth, Sea, Air, British Music for Cello and Orchestra (2024) [Hi-Res]

Laura van der Heijden joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth for this album of British cello concertos. Frank Bridge’s Oration, composed in 1929–30, was intended as an outcry against the inhumanity of warfare, and a tribute to the victims of the First World War. Its arch-form single continuous movement exhibits the intense chromaticism typical of Bridge’s output from this era.

Commissioned by the Ukrainian-born cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, Walton’s Cello Concerto suffered a number of difficulties with regard to first performances (Piatigorsky suffered a mental breakdown; Walton missed the UK première because of a nasty road accident) but it has nevertheless become a staple of the repertoire. It was with this concerto that Laura van der Heijden won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, in 2012.

The young British composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School and then the University of Cambridge and King’s College London, and rapidly established herself as one of the most talented and prolific composers of her generation. Earth, Sea, Air was written for van der Heijden, who gave the work’s première in Glasgow in 2023, a week before making this recording with the same forces.