At the forefront of contemporary music for over six decades, Thea Musgrave is one of the leading composers of her generation. She has conducted many of her own pieces on both sides of the Atlantic. Her vividly imaginative and well-crafted scores resonate with audiences worldwide. Fellow composer Judith Weir has astutely ascribed Musgrave’s exceptionally rich and varied catalogue of works to ‘a capacity for constant self-renewal combined with a shrewd awareness of what is currently happening in musical style.’ This release features three of Musgrave’s works- Phoenix Rising (1997), Loch Ness- A Post Card from Scotland (2012), and Poets in Love (2009). Each of these works is receiving here its world premiere recording.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a translation by Edward Fitzgerald of a selection of poems which were originally written in Persian and are attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. There are about a thousand poems in the complete volume. British composer Granville Bantock composed this choral setting of the works. Part 1 premiered in 1906, Part 2 in 1907, Part 3 in 1909, and the complete works were performed in 1910 at Queen’s Hall. This four disc set is the only complete recording ever made of the work, and is made up of original BBC Broadcasts from 1968 and 1979.

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REVIEWS:

Those who want to hear Omar Khayyam in all its glorious monumentality will need to buy the Lyrita set. it’s one of the monuments in British music that needs to be heard.

– The Guardian

Del Mar’s soloists sing with urgency and passion. A hugely enterprising addition to Lyrita’s ever-growing catalogue.

– Gramophone

This lively 1979 revival of the complete work is well coupled with other less rare Bantock, especially Fifine at the Fair. Del Mar, an eminent Strauss scholar, has a sure feel for the orchestral writing of this era, well paced and translucent rather than weighty.

– BBC Music Magazine

At the heart of this CD is the cellist Raphael Wallfisch. He not only performs these pieces with the utmost musicianship but they were also all written for him. Since the BBC NOW play with their customary skill under William Boughton, about as well established an expert on his native British music as one could wish to have, this CD is home and dry. The Hoddinott Hall is one of the best acoustics in the country and Lyrita's engineers have, as usual, produced a splendid sound. I did wonder about the slight left-placement of the cello but that is where soloists usually sit so it may simply reflect reality.

Joubert's work is, as the title states, in two movements. Each lasts a little over 11 minutes. Considering it is scored for only double woodwind, horns and strings, it displays a wide range of instrumental colours and is not only impressively coherent but also makes a very pleasurable sound. There is plenty of energy in the work. This is not a pastoral idyll one can allow to just wash over you. Joubert keeps one firmly engaged throughout and reminded me that I have neglected my sole Joubert CD prior to this, the First Symphony, also on Lyrita.

The late Robert Simpson was a very important symphonist and composer of string quartets. His musical structures require close attention from his listeners. This concerto, one of a mere handful, is typical of his later style. It was in fact his last orchestral piece. It consists of a theme and eleven variations played without a break and lasting very nearly half an hour. It is by turns lyrical and dramatic, ending quietly. Though the orchestra is large the textures are always clear and I found myself gripped by his typically involved musical argument right up to the 'calm resignation' of the coda, described thus in the excellent notes by Paul Conway.

Finally Christopher Wright has come to my attention only recently, having heard an extract from his lovely Violin Concerto of 2010 (Dutton CDLX 7286), so I was not surprised to discover that his Cello Concerto is also a fascinatingly individual creation full of lovely sounds but also of much energy and momentum.

We do not hear many different cello concertos in the concert hall. Those by Elgar, Dvorak, Schumann and Shostakovich are deservedly the most frequently performed. The three recorded on this CD are of a quality and approachability to match such as Saint-Saëns, Hindemith, Martinu and Walton. They should most certainly not be allowed to lapse into obscurity.

- Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

These recordings are also available on Conifer 204/5.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Music of dissonant discontinuity and conflagration.

In this disc Lyrita steps about as far away as you can go from their accustomed heartland. This is music of dissonant discontinuity and conflagration – especially in the symphony. Its upheavals and eruptions are expressed in pointillistic silvery fragments and vertiginous stop-starts and mood-swings.sample We are immersed in this pool of imaginative effects immediately in Gerhard's Fourth - and final completed - Symphony. It stutters, creeps, excoriates and bawls. Previously recorded by Naive and by Chandos this its world premiere recording. In that sense it is an awesomely honest document recorded in the last year of Gerhard's life. In addition however it shouts the ultima thule of 1970s exclusivity and ivory towers.

The Violin Concerto is written in more beguilingly compromising tones. Here there is a connection with melody and an evident allegiance for the long melodic line even if it does have an astringent after-taste. Yfrah Neaman with his unmistakable silver thread of tone is as dedicated and fluent an interpreter as his BBC colleagues. In the finale Gerhard gives us a buzz-saw pell-mell climactic display - not above borrowing from Sarasate in mood rather than detail. Overall the concerto can be loosely and rather unsophisticatedly bracketed with the two Rawsthorne concertos, the Frankel and the Fricker; the latter reissued this month on Lyrita. The silence at the end of the concerto demands a burly if misty-eyed cheer from even the most impassive of listeners.

The BBCSO and its then conductor Colin Davis put this music through the hoops. Did anyone at the time think that these works would be recorded more than once. In the studio they must have thought they were recording these works for all time. The results certainly suggest that.

The completely satisfying notes are by MusicWeb writer Paul Conway one of the rising and risen authorities on twentieth century British music. Paul’s article on the Gerhard symphonies is well worth your attention … and mine. However don’t miss Guy Rickard’s article while you are here.

Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Includes work(s) by Frank Bridge. Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Sir Adrian Boult.

Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950), still the least-known significant English composer of his generation, composed in his prime three large-scale works with orchestra, a symphony (1937), a violin concerto (1942) and a cello concerto (1945). Part of Moeran’s neglect may perhaps be attributed to his derivative musical style. Yet the positive individuality of Moeran’s music, which grew in strength as he became older and is finally shorn of all props in the masterly cello concerto, overrides these derivations in nearly all his works. He is a composer with something to say and an unwavering judgment about the way in which it must be said.

Braithwaite’s engaging Holst proves well worth the wait

Nicholas Braithwaite’s effervescent 1980 account of the winsome Suite de ballet sounded stunning on black disc and continues to do so on silver (Decca’s peerless Kenneth Wilkinson was the balance engineer; the sumptuous acoustic is that of Kingsway Hall). All else is new to the catalogue. The three suites were set down in Watford Town Hall during summer 1993, while the Walt Whitman Overture was taped in the same venue in January 1988. The mind boggles at how performances and recordings of such superior quality can have remained mothballed for so long.

Holst composed the Overture and Suite de ballet during 1899 while on tour as repetiteur and trombonist with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. In neither will you glimpse any vestige of the mature composer (the overture doffs its hat to Brahms) but both parade a host of felicities and are given with palpable dedication here. Gordon Jacob made these skilful and sympathetic orchestrations of Holst’s two military-band suites in 1940 and 1945 (with No 2 renamed the Hampshire Suite – the majority of the folksongs it quotes hail from that county). Under Boult, No 1’s March bowls along with the greater unbuttoned panache, but there’s not much in it.

Commissioned as a test piece for the 1928 National Brass Band Festival, A Moorside Suite has long been a personal favourite (don’t deprive yourself of hearing the Grimethorpe Colliery Band’s unforgettable 1977 Decca recording, 3/86 – nla). Jacob’s affectionate reworking followed in 1952, and Braithwaite and the LPO relish its many deft touches. (On two copies I’ve tried there’s a tiny electronic-sounding blip at 3'04" in the haunting central Nocturne.) Attractively presented (the lucid and detailed booklet-essay is, curiously, uncredited), this release makes consistently enjoyable listening.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone [5/2007]

With two orchestral collections already out from Chandos and a third on the bench Cyril Scott’s music is at last making its way.

He died nine years short of his centenary. Had he lived to experience that iconic event he would have seen a couple of articles and very little else. In the 1980s things moved on a little as it did for his copains Granville Bantock and Josef Holbrooke. For Scott this took the form of a rather lacklustre orchestral collection from Marco Polo. Since then there has been a Chris Howell anthology of piano solos on Tremula and three double CD sets of the solo piano music played by Wilfred De’Ath on Dutton. The BBC broadcast the one act opera The Alchemist as well as the choral piece La Belle Dame Sans Merci and most recently the Violin Concerto, itself rumoured to be included on the next Chandos Scott volume. Latterly the real impact on the musical public’s consciousness has come from those two Chandos collections which in repertoire terms substantially overlap the present disc; the only completely new works there being the symphonies 3 and 4 and Neptune.

There’s no direct competition between this disc and the Chandos pair. Lyrita have here gathered the contents of two LPs issued in 1975 and 1977 giving us Scott’s principal output for piano and orchestra. The recordings were the result of a volatile collaboration between Richard Itter, John Ogdon and the irascible Anglophile conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann.

Do not expect from these three works frank heroics in the Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov or Brahms mode. This is not solo pianist in adversarial contest with orchestra, pugilistic and then subdued. The First Piano Concerto was written just before the Great War. Beecham conducted at the premiere and the composer was the soloist. Latterly it was taken up by Kendall Taylor, Moura Lympany and Esther Fisher. The work is subtly perfumed with solo textures abounding and an overpowering atmosphere of mystery and idyllic lambency. After the Chinese hieratics of the first movement the second shares the enigmatic ritualism of John Ireland’s Legend and Forgotten Rite. The arcane beauties of the piece can be sampled in the dialogue of gong and celesta. Liquid Debussian touches create a meditative art nouveau kaleidoscope – a Klimt canvas in motion. The mood changes for the finale with its Handel-out-of-Grainger jocularity.

The beguilingly glittering waywardness of the First Concerto can also be heard - though with none of the oriental edge - in Early One Morning. The folksong itself is for the most part deeply subsumed, rising in enchanting Copland-like mist at 4:18. It is most clearly limned by the piano at 5:03 onwards. This is by no means the sort of conventional variations on a theme that Stanford produced for Down Among the Dead Men. The recording sessions were the first performance of the revision for single piano and orchestra. The original was for two pianos and orchestra.

The Second Concerto cannot be precisely dated but it is known that the composer was working on it in 1956. It is quite short and is in three movements. A tougher nut than the First Concerto, its themes are more subtle. Its haunted swaying harmonic world recalls an overgrown, lichen-festooned castle. Herrmann’s Xanadu was perhaps an influence; I wonder if Scott saw Citizen Kane? More plausibly we might hazard that the concerto was influenced by Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. There is a positively Baxian war-dance trope at 00:32 in I. Otherwise the stylistic links are as with the other works: with the last two piano concertos by Nicolai Medtner, the Symphonic Variations of Arnold Bax (contemporary with Scott’s First Piano Concerto) and with John Foulds’ Dynamic Triptych and Essays in the Modes.

The cover of the CD booklet is a detail from the cover of the LP SRCS81: a portrait of Scott at age 52 painted by George Hall Neale. The notes are by Christopher Palmer and Roger Wimbush and are taken from the original LPs which are:

SRCS-81 Piano Concerto No. 1 in C / Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO
SRCS-82 Piano Concerto No. 2; Early One Morning (Poem for Piano and Orchestra) / Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO

This is a generously timed disc presenting Scott’s subtly beguiling piano concertos. The first is the more instantly captivating of the two but the second has much to commend it. Superbly done.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

One of Parry's finest works, magnificently performed, and the best of the two available recordings of "The Sons of Light".

This was the first recording of "The Sons of Light". When I reviewed the second recording, by David Lloyd-Jones on Naxos, I found the Lyrita preferable, with more presence to the recording, more vital conducting and better choral diction. At that time there still seemed to be no prospect of the many Lyrita treasures ever seeing the light of day again. Now things are changing and this is the recording to get.

I referred in my review to the "coursing energy and phenomenal range of colour" of the work. It is, in its way, one of Vaughan Williams’s most impressive. You would certainly never imagine it was written to be sung by children – 1,150 of them at the first performance in 1951, with the accompaniment of the LPO under Boult. What worries me is that, every time I come to it, I find I don’t remember it. It’s not just that the themes don’t stay in my mind. As the work plays I don’t get any sense of recognition – "Ah, I remember that bit now". I hear it as a work I’ve never heard before. This is not a problem I have with Vaughan Williams generally.

Though I also had the LP containing "The Mystic Trumpeter" I never really listened to it often enough to say whether it sticks in my mind or not. I should think it unlikely. I find the same problem here as with Vaughan Williams’s "Willow-Wood", which was also on the Naxos/Lloyd-Jones disc. The composer has very skilfully set the poem line by line, with meaningful upward swoops for important words, pregnant key-changes and so on. He’s produced a nice wall-paper backing to a poem that is far more exciting when it’s simply read. But composition is about creation. It is a constructive process. If you start with an exhilarating poem and finish with a piece of music with about as much tension as a wet lettuce, is this to be defined as composition or decomposition? A work for Holst completists only. The performance is good enough, though Armstrong’s voice sometimes billows when it should soar. Holst seems to have a whopping Wagnerian soprano voice in mind and Armstrong, for all her virtues, was not exactly that. There is also a touch of opaqueness to some of her notes on the CD, though not on the LP.

The Parry is a far more memorable work. The composer had the good sense to choose a poem which provides a refrain. He does not repeat the same music every time but provides a new variation of it. The result is a sort of variation rondo form, combining continuous development with structural unity. Parry is at his finest and most eloquent throughout, from the lilting opening to the dancing energy of the later stanzas. There is a satisfying build-up which dies away to a touching close. There is also a lovely solo stanza, beautifully sung by Teresa Cahill. John Quinn noted in his review that her word underlay at the end of this stanza was at variance with the new edition he was using and wondered if the edition had been revised. I doubt it; I have a copy of the original edition and the textual underlay is different from what is sung there, too. Quite simply, the music as written calls unrealistically for a third lung, so I imagine Cahill herself changed the underlay in order to take a breath in the middle. Composers who aren’t singers miscalculate in this way more often than you’d expect – even Verdi did sometimes. Read John’s review, by the way; he has had the good fortune to sing in a rare performance of the work and his enthusiasm comes from within. But did the soprano at that performance cope with that long phrase in a single breath?

If Parry is at his best, so is Willcocks. It’s a thrilling performance from a great choral conductor. This is the only recording of the piece so far, but now it’s available again we hardly need another. Just for the record, I have always thought Cahill a little insecure in her opening phrase, but thereafter she is splendid. She has a lovely disc of R. Strauss and Rachmaninov to her credit and, unlike Sheila Armstrong in "The Mystic Trumpeter", her voice doesn’t billow, it soars.

Maybe in 1912 the Parry seemed old-fashioned. In 2007 it just seems timeless.

Outstanding recordings, as always with Lyrita, and notes by Ursula Vaughan Williams, Bernard Benoliel and Imogen Holst.

-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by various composers.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Daniel Jones (1912-1993) composed in a wide range of genres, yet the cornerstone of his prolific output is the Symphony, memorably described by him as ‘a dramatic structure with an emotive intention’. He tackled the form afresh with each of his 13 examples, of which the first 12 are based on a different note of the chromatic scale. Jones’s Second Symphony was written between March and July 1950 and first broadcast in the Welsh region by an augmented BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under the composer on 13 September 1951. The Second Symphony places great emphasis on intricate rhythms and combines both lyrical and dance elements. There is a focus on orchestral colour, epitomised by the prominent role given to the celesta in the first, third and fourth movements. Expansive, big-boned and at times uncharacteristically discursive, it is Jones’ last symphony conceived on a large canvas: from now on his symphonic works would be increasingly concise and cogent, rejecting any orchestral colour extraneous to the musical argument. Daniel Jones’s Eleventh Symphony in E flat was completed on 7 December 1983 and premiered by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves on 20 October 1984 in the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea. Commissioned by the Swansea Festival, it is dedicated to the memory of George Froom Tyler, chairman of the festival committee, who had died in 1983 and was a friend of the composer. Though each of his thirteen symphonies is a unique and highly personal statement, the cycle as a whole maintains an unwavering consistency of quality and vision. Daniel Jones domonstrates a steadfast integrity throughout, never bowing to the latest trends. His priority is always to communicate directly with the listener.

Tracklist:
Michael BALFE (1808-1870)
The Bohemian Girl: Galop (1843) [1:26]
Philharmonia Orchestra/Nicholas Braithwaite
Sir Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Variations on an Original Theme ‘Enigma’ Op. 36: X. Dorabella (1899) [2:41]
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 in C Op. 39 (1930) [5:41]
New Philharmonia Orchestra/Andrew Davis
Frederick DELIUS (1862-1934)
A Village Romeo and Juliet: The Walk to the Paradise Garden (1905) [10:49]
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Myer Fredman
Percy GRAINGER (1882-1961)
Shepherd’s Hey; The Immovable Do (1908-13; 1933-42) [2:11; 5:04]
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Nicholas Braithwaite
Sir Hamilton HARTY (1879-1941)
An Irish Symphony: The Fair-Day (1904) [3:01]
New Philharmonia Orchestra/Vernon Handley
Peter WARLOCK (1894-1930)
Capriol, Suite for full orchestra (1926-28) [9:47]
London Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Braithwaite
Lord BERNERS (1883-1950)
The Triumph of Neptune: Hornpipe (1926) [1:50]
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Nicholas Braithwaite
Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
St. Paul’s Suite for strings Op. 29 No. 2 (1913) [13:28]
English Chamber Orchestra/Imogen Holst
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) [16:08]
rec. Jan 1979, Kingsway Hall (Balfe); Jan 1974, Walthamstow Assembly Hall (Elgar); Jan 1970, Walthamstow Assembly Hall (Delius); Aug 1978, Kingsway Hall (Grainger; Berners); April 1976, Kingsway Hall (Harty); Sept 1978, Watford Town Hall (Warlock); Jan 1968, Walthamstow Assembly Hall (RVW)

R E V I E W:

A fine introduction to Musical Britain

When I first saw the advert for this CD I assumed that it was the ‘sweepings up’ from the floor of the Lyrita studios: it was all the bits and pieces from their vinyl pressings that could not find a home elsewhere. Yet two things made me modify that view. Firstly I know that there is a vast amount of material awaiting re-release (the mono recordings of Jacob, White, Ireland and Wordsworth, for example) and secondly, as I listened to this CD I realised that it made a fine introduction to Musical Britain. I remember as a child books called the ‘Boy’s Guide to’ … Field-craft, Trains, Racing Cars et al. Perhaps this, in a more PC age, could be referred to as the "Individual’s Guide to British Music"?

The CD opens with a piece that was written when Great Britain was a ‘land without music.’ The Galop is probably the most famous excerpt from Michael Balfe’s best known opera: The Bohemian Girl. And of course it was once a Tommy Beecham ‘Lollipop’. Perhaps Balfe’s twenty-nine operas do not signify in the early 21st century when compared to G&S, Tippett or Benjamin Britten, but in his day he was a seriously popular composer. And Ireland – Balfe was born in Dublin - was at that time part of the United Kingdom!

I usually baulk at excerpting from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. My exception is the annual outing of Nimrod at the Cenotaph: I can forgive anything in those circumstances. So I suppose I am not really happy about one short variation being given here. Yet here it is - Dorabella which follows on from Nimrod and is a complete change of tone, mood and emotion. We hear the ‘stammering lightness’ and ‘merry chatter’ of Elgar’s helper and admired Dora Penny. It is a lovely piece that actually does stand alone … just about … although I feel that it is much more telling and effective following that great Beethovenian variation in the complete work.

And how often do we hear the P&C March No.5? Even enthusiasts of ‘Grunge’ cannot have avoided ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ in their lives’ journey. But how many know the other four (five)? I guess most people over the age of thirty-five will recall No. 4 in G being played as the recessional at the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding. The rest are little known and rarely heard. But please note that this late - it was composed four years before Elgar’s death - march is rather good. And the interesting thing is that most of us come to it afresh. It has not accrued the baggage - good, bad and indifferent - of being an alternative National Anthem played at the Proms.

I am not an opera fan, but I have always loved The Walk to Paradise Garden by Fred Delius. I know the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet and realise that it has a tragic context in that work. However, I got to know the piece on an old Beecham release of Delius orchestral works on Decca Eclipse and have had my own programme for this work ever since! So I suggest that listeners dump the libretto and see this piece as a nature poem – descriptive of whatever landscape or mindscape moves them most.

Percy Grainger is a rare personality. He wrote a vast amount of music that is little played these days. I am not a fan of his, yet I do appreciate that he was probably a wayward genius. And a few of his works do have the capacity to move me: most I find entertaining. The majority of listeners will know his ubiquitous Country Gardens which was arranged for just about every instrumental combination possible. Yet Shepherd’s Hey and the Immovable Do presented here deserve greater popularity. The latter piece was inspired by a leaking harmonium which continually sounded a ‘high C’ throughout the performance of whatever Grainger was playing. Shepherd’s Hey is based on the folk tune ‘The Keel Row’. Incidentally, the score was dedicated to Edvard Grieg. Both miniatures are worthy additions to the repertoire and would make excellent encores - if given the chance.

Our musical exploration moves back to Ireland. This time it is the second movement of Sir Hamilton Harty’s fine Irish Symphony – subtitled The Fair-Day. Most people will associate Harty with the Hallé Orchestra which he conducted between 1920 and 1933. Yet he was also an accomplished composer who wrote not only the present work but a wonderful piano concerto, a violin concerto and a number of other excellent pieces. Fortunately, most of these were released on Chandos a number of years ago and are still available. Additionally, Naxos has contributed their recordings of the Symphony and the Piano Concerto. Harty is a composer well worth investigating. The present piece is a fine evocation of a ‘Fair Day’ in Ireland that must have been familiar to the composer as a young man. Look out for the fiddler tuning up and the fine reel!

Everyone knows that Peter Warlock was a pseudonym. His real name was Philip Heseltine. He took the name of Warlock after some involvement with occult mysteries after time spent in Ireland during the Great War. More often noted for his superb songs, Warlock composed a mere handful of works for orchestral forces – including An Old Song, the Serenade for Frederick Delius and the Capriol Suite. Best known in its string orchestra incarnation, this latter work was originally given as a piano duet. Latterly it was arranged for full orchestra – this is the version we hear on this CD. The Suite is based on tunes found in an antique dissertation called ‘Orchesography’ which was supposedly penned by a certain ‘Capriol’. The programme notes inform us that the Suite was rejected by a number of publishers: this is hard to imagine since we now regard the work as one of the minor masterpieces of 20th century music. Apparently Warlock sold the work for a mere 25 guineas!

Lord Berners’ real name is much more impressive – Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson: it sounds as if it were straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. He was an artist and a ballet producer whose day-job appeared to be that of a diplomat. Moving in the rarefied atmosphere of the Sitwells it is not surprising that he was an eccentric. The Triumphs of Neptune was conceived by Sacheverell and eventually became a successful feature for the Ballets Russes. The Hornpipe does not press on to the limits of musical invention, but it is attractive and does justice to its nautical origins. It is well worth discovering other music by this fascinating, if somewhat odd, composer.

Gustav Holst’s St Paul’s Suite surely needs no introduction or recommendation to readers of these pages. Yet sometimes it is easy to forget that this work comes from the same pen as The Planets. The work is conducted here by the composer’s daughter Imogen: to my ear it is one of the best recordings of this work in the repertoire. It is a Suite that must be listened to in its entirety and not excerpted.

The last piece is a major masterpiece. Along with Tippett’s Double Concerto and Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro it is one of the most important essays in string writing in British musical literature. The Tallis Fantasia is a work that seems to gather up the whole tradition of England – its landscape, its literature and its religion. It is impossible to listen to this work without being aware of the whole sweep of history – both musical and otherwise. In one sense it is a timeless work, yet in another it is as much a part of twentieth century music as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue or Berg’s Violin Concerto. The Fantasia is a visionary score which marked its composer out as a major figure in the British musical scene.

Most cognoscenti of British music will have all these works in their CD collections. This release is a bit of a pot-pourri. Yet consider this. It is good to take the opportunity of listening to a variety of pieces played end to end - now and again; it reminds us of our whole musical heritage. And lastly if you know anyone who is edging towards an appreciation of the native music of the British Isles – this is the present for them. In either case – Buy it!

-- John France, MusicWeb International

The 1970s origins of many of Lyrita’s too long delayed CD revivals need hold no fears for any purchaser. The forty plus year old sound remains an object lesson taught by the analogue tradition to the digital era.

The recordings here first appeared on various LPs from what was then known as the Lyrita Recorded Edition. Richard Itter’s Lyrita label was, from the very outset, a steadfast champion for Ireland. Overall he was the composer who had the largest number of LPs in the Lyrita listing. There were mono LPs of the piano music from Alan Rowlands, Eric Parkin’s stereo series, the chamber music and the songs. The orchestral LPs from Lyrita were from the period 1966-1971 and all were Boult-conducted:

SRCS32 Prelude: The Forgotten Rite; Mai Dun; Legend for piano and orchestra; Overture Satyricon
SRCS36 These Things Shall Be for baritone solo, chorus and orchestra; Piano Concerto in E flat
SRCS31 London Overture; Concertino Pastorale; Epic March; The Holy Boy; Minuet and Elegy (A Downland Suite)
SRCS45 Symphonic Prelude: Tritons; Two Symphonic Studies; Suite The Overlanders; Scherzo & Cortege (Julius Caesar)

The cover design for the CD booklet is taken from the Keith Hensby design for one of the original LPs and is based on an engraving of the Wren churches- clearly picking up the London reference.

Tritons is an early piece – which has curiosity value rather than anything else. The 40+ years since the recording session have lent the sound for this track a slight tubbiness but once the ear adjusts the brass sounds splendid with all the requisite grate and bite. Turning to a work of undoubted mastery, the effect in The Forgotten Rite is sumptuous - an object lesson in transparent scoring, sensitive interpretative choices and complementary recording technique. This is extraordinarily magical and fey music – gentle, dreamy and enigmatically beautiful. I noted at 6:10 a low key squeak.

The dream is blasted away by Mai-Dun. The title is taken from Thomas Hardy’s Wessex name for the earthworks known as Maiden Castle. It’s a dramatic piece which happily accommodates other influences including, in the aggressive French Horns at 1:20, Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony. This is mixed with Delian complexity (3:40). The horns sing out over top of searching forte strings at 4:20 and there are Baxian touches aplenty with at 6:18 a typical brass and percussion dance. As a performance this has more bite than Bryden Thomson on the even more splendidly recorded Chandos collection. However it is Barbirolli who gives this the best outing compromised only by 1940s mono sound on Dutton.

Both London and Epic March have also been recorded by Richard Hickox on Chandos. Hickox is in both cases more expansive than Boult. Boult’s London has sappy rhythmic bite and a glorious wide-stage orchestral image. The Epic March has full breadth and the splendour of a truly Elgarian nobilmente. In fact Ireland must surely have had the older composer’s warlike echoes of the Pomp & Circumstance No. 4 in mind. Lyrita missed a trick by not ending the disc with this piece. The recording misses not a detail: ‘ting’ of the triangle, the zesty side drum in left channel and rolling brass in the right; not to mention that affirmative warble from the brass benches at 5:41.

Rather like Bax, his flirtations with commissioned incidental music were invariably painful. He did not enjoy the BBC commission but on the evidence of Geoffrey Bush’s editorial work we can enjoy a stuttering Holstian scherzo full of jerky activity and a cortege of brooding epic melancholy. The cavernously sonorous clarity at 3:10 for brass and side drum is memorable.

Ireland sole foray into film music was for The Overlanders. Here the mediation between film and concert suite was done by Charles Mackerras – very appropriate given the Australian locale for the film. Scorched Earth has a Rawsthorne-like lyrical acidity – recalling the younger composer’s music for The Cruel Sea. The Intermezzo has a steady-as-she-goes swing in an open natural acoustic. In Brumbies Boult drives the music forward with muscular brusqueness. Note the fast flutter-tonguing from the trumpet. Night stampede has those magnificently burred and rolling horns and there is a majestic blast with which to end the suite.

The Lyrita reissue programme for the orchestral Boult-conducted Ireland will be completed in February and April 2007 with SRCD.241 and SRCD.242. The first will have Legend; Satyricon; Piano Concerto; These Things Shall Be and Two symphonic studies. The second is a mixed anthology: Ireland: Concertino Pastorale; The Holy Boy; Minuet & Elegy (Downland Suite) and Bridge: Rosemary; Suite for Strings; Sally in our Alley; Cherry Ripe; Lament; Sir Roger de Coverley.

The liner-notes for this issue are by three pillars of the Ireland quarter Julian Herbage, Harold Rutland and Geoffrey Bush.

A classic John Ireland collection – magically done. Not the essential Ireland apart from Forgotten Rite - for that you must go to SRCD.241 – but full of vitality and imagination.

-- Rob Barnett , MusicWeb International