Michael Poll & the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Portraits and Serenades
Pixaudio Records

Many things distinguish this recording, including conductor Michael Poll's assured direction of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) and handling of the material, the command of the orchestra, and the splendid quality of the five works presented. But perhaps the detail that registers most strongly is simply the lustrous sound the orchestra produces when the material's scored entirely for strings. Running a close second is mezzo-soprano Simone Ibbett Brown, who joins the orchestra on the album's closing setting, Odaline de la Martínez's Four Afro-Cuban Poems. As the sole non-instrumental work on the release, it can't help but stand out when it arrives after pieces by Ian Venables, Shruthi Rajasekar, Daniel Thomas Davis, and Edward Elgar.

Poll, who established himself internationally as a classical guitarist prior to conducting, demonstrates a lucid understanding of the pieces and coaxes from the orchestra, established in 1946 by Sir Thomas Beecham, performances marked by clarity of expression, attention to detail, balance, and precision. It's perhaps surprising that the album feels as cohesive as it does when its works by British and American composers are so diverse. Rubbing shoulders with pastoral evocations of the English countryside are pieces associated with Afro-Cuban and Indian cultures.

While Venables has been described as "Britain's greatest living composer of art song" (Musical Opinion), his Portrait of Janis (2000) eschews vocals for a lyrical expression characterized by wistful ‘backward glances' of experiences with friends. A lovely, chorale-like ‘Janis theme' crystallizes early, which undergoes development until a second ‘backward glance' arrives, this one more American in feel and inspired by a California visit from 2000. The strings' slow, measured gait and the music's repeated expansions and contractions make for a powerfully affecting and beautiful opening statement.

The only non-living composer to be featured on the album, Elgar (1857-1934) is represented by the three-part Serenade for Strings in E minor, composed in 1892 and written as a gift for his wife on the occasion of their third wedding anniversary. After a lilting “Allegro piacevole” initiates the work, its central “Larghetto” goes deeper with flowing expressions of ardour and tenderness and music that's earnestly and poignantly articulated. Vigorous by comparison, naturally, is its concluding “Allegretto,” which ends the work on a buoyant and harmonious note.

Drawing on her dual background in Carnatic and Western classical traditions, Indian-American Rajasekar explores the mythic figure Arjuna, the spiritual hero of the Mahabharata, in her single-movement Son of Pandu. Vivacious and driven by animated string flurries, the work meditates episodically on this ancient warrior for eight adventurous minutes. Gentle introspective passages surface alongside robust action-packed ones, all such parts woven fluidly together by the composer. Taken from the opera SIX.TWENTY.OUTRAGEOUS, which premiered in New York in 2018, Davis's A Photograph Reproduces grew out of a scene in the opera where an immigrant family's on the verge of separation. Unfolding patiently, the music gradually blossoms into a stately, dignified, and heart-wrenching elegy for string orchestra, with ample emotional ground covered in just seven minutes.

At album's end we have Four Afro-Cuban Poems by Odaline de la Martínez, a Cuban-American, London-based composer and conductor who holds the distinction of being the first woman to conduct the BBC Proms. Scored for mezzo-soprano and string orchestra, the twelve-minute work sets music to poems from Nicolás Guillén's 1930 collection Motivos de Son that explore relationships between men and women. Contrasting tonalities and attitudes appear from one song to the next, with Brown's vocal delivery accentuating those changes. A woman sassily tells her broke lover to get some money in “Búcate Plata,” after which a woman mocks a man in “Tú No Sabe Inglé” for bragging about his command of English when he can't even say “yes,” the woman's ridiculing tone coming through vividly in the bite of Brown's attack. In the brooding “Sigue,” one man instructs another to keep moving and not give attention to a certain woman as she's “no good”; brighter by comparison is “Mi Chiquita” for its joyful, rhythmically enticing celebration of womanhood.

Impeccably performed by Poll and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and presented handsomely by Pixaudio Records, Portraits and Serenades is as an attractive release on both musical and visual grounds, and that only the orchestra's string players are featured (the singer notwithstanding, of course) in no way lessens the strong impression the recording makes.

October 2026