McEwen: Three Border Ballads
This is the first release on Chandos of the beautiful and engaging music of Sir John Blackwood  McEwen (1868-1948). These are his three border ballads:Grey Galloway(1908),The Demon  Lover(1906/7) andCoronach(1906). The order here is the composer's. They are extended tone  poems based loosely on various English, Scottish, and Celtic ballads. What McEwen has done is to frame  them in a broader tone-poem setting, enhance them with more orchestral color, and finally making them  more dramatic. They have similarities to the tone poems of Arnold Bax, especiallyCoronach(or  perhaps it's the other way around). This is beautiful--and original--music, anyway.--Paul Cook