Recordings

With Janet Sung (violin), the Britten Sinfonia and Jac van Steen (conductor)

The title comes from Kandinsky: a colour, deepening, ‘turns into silent stillness and becomes white'. The disc follows colour through four composers connected by teaching — Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel, and Kenneth Hesketh with Dutilleux, who had Ravel behind him in turn. Vaughan Williams's compact, Bach-influenced Concerto for Violin and Orchestra sits beside Ravel's Tzigane and his jazz- and blues-accented Violin Sonata, the last chamber music he wrote. Two first recordings complete the programme: Hesketh's orchestration of Dutilleux's piano suite Au gré des ondes, and his Inscription-Transformation for violin and orchestra, written for Janet Sung in 2016 in memory of Dutilleux and of Hesketh's grandmother, who died during its composition. Simon Callaghan partners Sung in the Ravel sonata.