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Rare treasure

Thirty-five years ago all I knew about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was that he wrote Hiawatha. My father told me he had heard it in Manchester during the nineteen thirties; in fact my grandfather may have been conducting it. I knew a few piano pieces and the ubiquitous Demande et Réponse from the Petite Suite de Concert. That was it. A few years later I was browsing some old music magazines and was amazed to read that Coleridge-Taylor had written a Symphony: I was convinced that I would never get the chance of hearing it. It was some time during the mid ’nineties that I was chatting to the manager of a well known provincial record shop. We were enthusing about rare English music: he rather confidentially told me that a recording - this one - had just been made of Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto. However he could not tell me when it was about to hit the streets …

I guess that I forgot all about it until one day I heard the ‘Andante semplice’ on Classic FM. This was from the Philippe Graffin version with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Unfortunately I had not heard the presenter’s introduction and had eight or nine minutes of guessing what the work was – but I was impressed. When announcer announced I was amazed that such a gorgeous piece had lain dormant for so long – and immediately went out and bought the CD (Avie AV0044 - see review)! Two subsequent recordings later I have not changed my view. In fact having heard all three versions of this Concerto I am convinced that this is an essential addition to the repertoire – both for the violin and for English Music.

To be fair there is no way that it can be compared to Elgar’s masterwork: and I do have to admit that I personally prefer the Somervell Concerto that is coupled on the Hyperion release (CDA67420- see review). However, Coleridge-Taylor’s Concerto is a work that is full of sunshine and light and colour: it is a descriptive work, not a confessional one. It must rate as one of the composer’s masterpieces.

The work is written in three contrasting, yet well balanced and consistent movements. The opening ‘allegro’ is a modified sonata form and commands our attention and our interest from the first bar to the last. Perhaps Dvorak and Mendelssohn are never too far away but Coleridge-Taylor has made this music his own. This is not a pastiche: it is an impressive exploration of the violinist’s technique and expression using a musical language that was appropriate to the period.

The slow movement is lovely – and although I loathe excerpting movements from symphonies and concertos I can see that this one will be heard ‘stand alone’ for some time to come. The programme notes point out that it is in the nature of a ‘love poem’ – which nods back to Hiawatha.

The last movement is perhaps the best – although I can hear some people saying that it is derivative. There is a good balance between the various episodes of the ‘rondo’ – including some wistful or reflective moments. However, the work concludes with an “impressive peroration [and] a triumphant conclusion.”

It would be wrong to regard the Legend and the Romance as makeweights – they are not. Both pieces are delightful miniatures that are definitely ‘children of their time’, but have a sufficient air of timelessness about them to make them worthy of the occasional airing in the concert hall and on CD.

The Romance shares the same melody as the posthumous Sonata for Violin and piano in D minor – and I imagine that musicologists will have their views on precedence – although the present work would appear to be a reworking of the Sonata which is likely to be a ‘student’ work.

Both the Romance and the Legend are easy on the mind and the ear and are well written and totally memorable.

I am delighted that Bredon Hill - a rhapsody for violin and orchestra has been given another outing on this CD: recently Dutton issued a fine performance of this work on CDLX 7174. I have written extensively about this work elsewhere on MusicWeb so I will make just a few comments here.

This is quite definitely - and deliberately - a ‘retro’ work – harking back to an earlier English Pastoral tradition exemplified by Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and George Butterworth’s Shropshire Lad Rhapsody. However, the reason why Julius Harrison chose to evoke a musical landscape from the past is complex. It had much to do with the wartime mood of nostalgia – seeking to preserve an icon of an England that probably never existed – except in the mind of poets, musicians and filmmakers – but was important to the concept of a country that was worth fighting for. It was widely broadcast to service people across the world with considerable success.

It is a work that demands our attention and certainly will appeal to all listeners who enjoy ‘landscape in music’. A beautiful meditation that explores considerable depths of feeling, it is introspective but at the same time inspiring. Bredon Hill must count as one of the finest musical portrayals of the English countryside. It is unbelievable that it remained unheard for so many years.

Perhaps the last word ought to go to Gordon Bottomley. Commenting on this piece, he wrote that “the dew was so fresh and undimmed by footsteps. Some of the harmonies came from further off than Bredon: perhaps there had been footsteps on them that did not show on the dew.”

It is a rare treasure and deserves due respect.

The question is begged as to what version of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto to buy. The short answer is that it depends! I feel that all three recordings are impressive and provide first class performances of this work. However I do have a sneaking preference for this present interpretation that is hard to put into words. Perhaps I feel that Lorraine McAslan manages to get to the core of the piece and to sympathise with the Edwardian musical language?

So deciding on the disc to buy devolves to other considerations. Firstly, couplings. The Avie disc has the Dvorak Concerto as its stable mate. The Hyperion introduces the listener to the fine Violin Concerto by Arthur Somervell. The present disc includes the two minor works (unheard by most listeners for nearly a century) by Coleridge-Taylor and what is probably Julius Harrison’s orchestral masterpiece. It is horses for courses – but my personal choice would be to own all three! However if I was pushed, well the Somervell is too important a work for me to ignore.

-- John France, MusicWeb International

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Includes work(s) by Alun Hoddinott. Conductor: David Atherton. Soloist: Gervase de Peyer.

Ukrainian-born conductor Nicolai Malko studied music in St. Petersburg. He eventually began teaching at the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories. Malko had a sporadic relationship with the BBC, and although he was never a staff conductor, he visited, taught, and conducted occasionally from 1929 until his passing in 1962. This 4-disc set contains some of Malko’s best conducting for BBC broadcast, including works by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn, Mussorgsky, Bruckner, and more.

"This well-transferred collection of BBC broadcasts has to be one of the most significant "historical" orchestral releases in recent years. There are of course various commercial discs with Malko; here, though, we have the Russian-born conductor captured in full flight.

The principle novelty is The Kodaly's one-act theater piece The Spinning Room, sung in English, and thoroughly enjoyable. The remainder of the set is purely orchestral.

Minor tape imperfections and playing fluffs notwithstanding, this is a musically enriching set and our experience of the conductor is duly extended." – Gramophone

An extraordinary, tough and unconventional woman, Rebecca Clarke gives us her Music for Cello and Piano. Being the first female student to attend Stanford for composition, Clarke excelled. She quickly became a leader in her field and was able to support herself. Clarke's compositions took her around the world where she has showcased her works as well as her musicianship on the viola.

John Ireland was another one of those high-quality composers who avoided large forms, and so will always rate as (at best) a "minor master". But his Piano Concerto is an early 20th century masterpiece, a real crowd-pleaser in a Prokofiev-meets-Gershwin sort of way. Eric Parkin is the pianist most closely associated with Ireland's work, and this recording of the concerto is the finest available. Parkin re-recorded the piece for Chandos, but that version is comparatively labored and heavy-handed, as well as glaringly recorded. Here, Parkin plays with an ease of rhythm, a flexibility and flow that makes the music swing as it must, and (as usual) Lyrita's sonics are terrific.

The remainder of the program is scarcely less attractive. These Things Shall Be is an optimistic choral paean that packs a lot of musical material into 20 scant minutes. Satyricon, an overture that for some reason never gets played these days, once again reveals Ireland's high level of melodic inspiration and sheer craftsmanship in those few works he composed with orchestra. The Legend for piano and orchestra has Parkin once again in top form, and all of this music benefits from Adrian Boult's authoritative but unobtrusively sensitive podium guidance. So many of these Lyrita discs are true "building a collection titles"--the one disc you must have if you want the best and most representative selection of its respective composer's work. Here is another in that distinguished line.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

British composer Peter Racine Fricker was one of the first to be heavily influenced by the early 20th century masters Bartok, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, and his style is an assimilation of these influences combined with his own very distinct musical voice. Fricker’s compositional catalog exceeds 160 works, and includes all genres except for staged opera.

The Vision of Judgement performance presented here is conducted by Charles Groves, and features the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It was broadcast on BBC on October 14, 1980. Symphony No. 5 for Organ and Orchestra features Gillian Weir on organ, as well as the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis. It aired on the BBC on May 5, 1976, and was performed live from the festival hall.

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These recordings of orchestral works by William Wordsworth (1908-1988) are all performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Loughran or Stewart Robertson. These three works are original broadcast recordings from the BBC which aired between 1968 and 1979. These outstanding pieces are indicative of Wordsworth’s unique compositional style. He once wrote of his compositions, “I am quite convinced that I have something to say, and an individual way of saying it which the ordinary music-lover is capable is responding to if he is given sufficient opportunities.”

Includes work(s) by Walter Leigh. Ensembles: Philharmonia Orchestra, London, New Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Nicholas Braithwaite. Soloist: Trevor Pinnock.

Richard Hickox's performances of these two symphonies for Chandos are very good; indeed, his take on the first movement of the Sixth Symphony, so redolent of Sibelius' Third, is a touch more lively than that on offer here. But there's no denying the general superiority of the orchestral playing under Norman Del Mar, or Lyrita's richer sonics (Handley and the LSO only appear in the Soliloquy, very well played by Rohan de Saram). Yes, there are moments in the quicker sections of both symphonies where the textures get a bit clogged, but that's really the fault of the composer. Rubbra fought the orchestra. While he clearly was a symphonist of substance, getting his message across seemed to cause him no end of trouble. In these middle symphonies, however, the problems have largely been solved, and along with Nos. 5 and 7 they constitute the essential core of his output. Symphony No. 8, subtitled "Hommage to Teilhard de Chardin", gives free rein to the spiritual impulse that underlies so much of Rubbra's art, and although the Hickox cycle is complete, if you just want to sample this elusive (but very serious and ultimately worthwhile) composer, then this is the place to start. [11/16/2006]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Franz Reizenstein showed gifts as a pianist and composer from early childhood. In 1930 he went to the Berlin State Academy to study with Paul Hindemith and Leonid Kreutzer, but was forced to leave Germany upon Hitler’s rise to power. He arrived in London where he studied at the Royal College of Music. In the years following the war he built a successful career as a concert pianist. A respected teacher, he served as professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Manchester College of Music. Reizenstein held a strong and often expressed belief in the importance of giving young musicians the opportunity of playing contemporary music during their early training. His related wish that music teachers would make more use of worthwhile teaching pieces by present-day composers bore fruit in a number of pieces for children and inexperienced players that appeared at regular intervals throughout his oeuvre, several of which are featured on this release.

This two disc set contains two of Cyril Rootham’s most prolific works: Symphony No. 2, and Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. This recording of Symphony No. 2 is from a BBC Broadcast on January 28, 1984 featuring the Scottish Philharmonic Singers, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and conductor Vernon Handley. This recording of Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity is from a BBC Broadcast on December 18, 1975 featuring soloists Teresa Cahill, Philip Langridge, and Michael Rippon, the Trinity Boys Choir, the BBC Singers, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and conductor Vernon Handley.

The Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra, Op.38, was written in 1934-1936 and revised and rescored in 1942-1943. The composer himself was the soloist in the premiere which took place in a Promenade concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on 10 August 1943. Rubbra also performed it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent on 4 July 1946 at the second Cheltenham Music Festival. The Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Cyril Scott for piano, Op.69, was composed in honour of Scott’s seventieth birthday in September 1949 and premiered by Margaret Good on 5 June 1950 in a BBC broadcast. It is based on three bars from the slow movement of Scott’s Piano Sonata no.1, Op.66. As part of the Northampton concert of Cyril Scott’s music which Rubbra organised in 1918, he programmed and performed four of Scott’s short solo piano works. Nearly fifty years later, he chose to perform another brief solo piano work by Scott to round off his BBC recital on 9 August 1967, Consolation. In his brief spoken introduction to the broadcast performance, Rubbra described this as ‘one of Scott’s maturest pieces’ written ‘at the height of his powers’ and characterised it as ‘a deeply felt ‘in memoriam’ written as a tribute to a close friend’. In 1958 he began work on the Violin Concerto, Op.103, finishing it in the summer of the following year. It was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall on 17 February 1960 when the soloist was Endré Wolf with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by its Principal Conductor at the time, Rudolf Schwarz. This first performance was relayed live and the BBC repeated the work in a Maida Vale performance three days later. A recording of that impressive second performance is presented here.

The two works on this new release are BBC Broadcast recordings from 1973 and 1977. Included on this album are The Song of Akhenaten Op. 5, and The Water and the Fire, both by Anthony Milner. The Water and the Fire is arguably the climax of Milner’s choral writing, and is widely regarded as a visionary piece. Featured artists on these recordings include soprano Janet Price , soprano Hazel Holt, tenor John Elwes, and baritone Stephen Roberts.

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This is one of the "new" Lyritas, in the sense that the recordings on this CD have never been issued before, even though they were made thirteen years ago. Though it’s a matter for regret that the recordings have lain in the vaults for so long it’s cause for unqualified rejoicing that such a delightful collection, all in sparkling performances, should now be available.

David Pyatt is an outstanding young British musician. I recall his victory in the BBC Young Musician of the year competition in 1988. At that time he was aged only 14 – he’d only taken up the horn six years earlier, I believe. He has since gone on to build a highly successful solo career, combining that with the post of Principal Horn in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, an assignment that he took up in the 1998/9 season.

All the works included here, with the exception of Ruth Gipps’s concerto were closely associated with the great Dennis Brain. I’m sure he played all of them superbly – he gave the premières of the Jacob, Arnold and Bowen works - but it’s hard to imagine stronger advocacy than all the pieces receive from David Pyatt. He’s recorded relatively closely, though not aggressively so, and not in such a way as to eclipse the consistently interesting orchestral parts. The closeness of the balance allows us to appreciate to the full his rich, round, golden tone as well as his seemingly effortless technique. This is, in short a superb demonstration of horn playing. There are other links within the programme too, besides the "Brain factor". For example, both Malcolm Arnold and Ruth Gipps were pupils of Gordon Jacob and the first broadcast performance of the Gipps concerto was given, in 1982, by Frank Lloyd, David Pyatt’s own teacher.

The concerto by Ruth Gipps seems to me to be the most serious of the pieces on this disc – not that any of them is exactly frivolous. She wrote it for her son, who gave the first performance. The first movement offers the soloist frequent opportunities for virtuosity but it’s predominantly a thoughtful movement. Unusually the middle movement is not slow in tempo; instead it’s a scherzo, featuring what Lewis Foreman memorably describes as a "thistledown tune". There’s a vivacious start to the finale but before long we reach a more lyrical and pensive section and this music alternates thereafter with livelier episodes. The accompaniment to this concerto features the fullest orchestration of the four and the scoring is consistently resourceful and interesting. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the short passage in the finale that Lewis Foreman highlights in his notes. Here, beginning at 4:30, the soloist duets with the celesta in a most imaginative and unusual piece of scoring. Like its companions on the disc this concerto cries out to be heard more often and David Pyatt is a splendid advocate for it.

He’s no less admirable in the splendid concerto by York Bowen, himself a horn player. The more I hear of Bowen’s music the more I like it and the more I marvel at its neglect. This is an inventive and tremendously enjoyable work in which a short, reflective slow movement catches the listener’s attention. The finale is cast mainly in a lively frame of mind but the romantic in York Bowen can’t resist pausing along the way for a lovely middle section in a slower tempo – and thank goodness for it.

Malcolm Arnold’s concerto is probably the best known of these concertos. Another work inspired by Dennis Brain, he gave its first performance at the Cheltenham Festival in July 1957, just a matter of weeks before his tragic and untimely death. Arnold, himself an orchestral trumpeter and therefore well versed in brass instruments, appears to write with complete understanding not just of the solo instrument but of the personality for whom he had written the work. The main material of the central slow movement is a nostalgic slow waltz that David Pyatt clearly relishes and which offers a few moments of relative repose before the headlong virtuosity of the finale.

The Gordon Jacob concerto is a delight from start to finish. The first movement frequently has the strings playing in motor rhythms but over the top of this material the soloist has interesting and lively music. There’s a substantial and lovely lyrical core to this movement and a demanding cadenza (from 7:20). The slow movement is a wonderfully atmospheric nocturne, which is imbued with a fine sense of lyrical repose. Pyatt is most eloquent here. Most of the time the finale dances along giving the soloist ample opportunity for display but there are some disarming lyrical stretches too.

This generously filled disc concludes with an encore in the shape of Hunter’s Moon. by Gilbert Vinter. This wasn’t written for Dennis Brain but he took it up towards the end of his life as something of a party piece. I hadn’t encountered it before and I found it most engaging. The outer sections, which contain a bouncy little march, frame a gorgeous cantabile central section. The whole piece breathes the atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I enjoyed the Vinter piece, but then I enjoyed the whole disc immensely. The music is of high quality and the standard of performance is consistently superb. In this last comment I include not just the marvellous solo playing of David Pyatt but also the fine support given to him by Nicholas Braithwaite and the LPO. The recorded sound is first rate and Lewis Foreman’s authoritative and enthusiastic notes are a model of their kind. For sheer listening pleasure this is one of the best discs to have come my way for a long time.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

A key figure in the British musical renaissance, Ethel Smyth was critically acclaimed for her music and writing during her lifetime. Smyth’s Sonata in C minor for cello and piano was written in 1880. The idiomatic handling of the instruments, the impressive command of form and the fluency of the melodic lines make this early work the equal, at least, of her later chamber pieces. The creative conviction of the composer Elizabeth Maconchy expressed here so eloquently, reflects her clarity of thought and strength of purpose. Her Divertimento for cello and piano was written for cellist William Pleeth and pianist Margaret Good, who gave the first broadcast performance on the BBC in 1943. The compositions of Elisabeth Lutyens are characterized by textural economy and organizational rigor. She wrote her Nine Bagatelles in 1942. The language of the work is indicative of a composer deeply connected to the music of her own era. Although Rebecca Clarke wrote most of her music in the early twentieth century, it was not until the final decades of that century that her stature was secured. Rhapsody for cello and piano is her longest and most intricate score.

It is as though Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire were not on show because no one could be bothered to clean it, or as though Wordsworth’s The Prelude had been allowed to go out of print. How can it have taken so long for this great and magical opera to appear on CD?

So many of the expressions of our age have frowned in their contemplation of it, or have turned away to cultivate arcane, private gardens. But here was Tippett in 1955 expressing joy, boundless optimism and faith in beauty and humanity; doing so, moreover, with such richness of imagery that even those who loved it at first hearing were a bit taken aback by its overwhelming abundance.

As so often with his pieces, it took a while to sink in, and for players and singers to get their fingers and their vocal chords around those springing rhythms and sinewy lines. The moment at which that happened was the moment of this recording and the performances that preceded it. Remedios and Carlyle are not simply managing those exuberant hocketings above the stave in their final duet; you would swear that they were enjoying them, and as they do so the image of love as a consuming flame is vividly projected. Burrows and the adorable Harwood are audibly moved by how much tenderness and innocence there is in their music, and they make a real and most touching couple. Herincx is wonderfully suave and bossy as King Fisher; Watts not only survives her forays into the bass-baritone register but makes an awesomely Sibylline figure of Sosostris. And Davis, raptly in love with this score and communicating that to his singers and players so effectively that one is never aware of them gritting their teeth and counting beats as though their lives depended on it, reveals again and again the opera’s magical sonorities. It is a superb performance: after it one can hardly read those early reviews (“incomprehensible libretto”, “too much counterpoint”, “half an hour too long”) without laughing. The recording, too, communicates a real sense of live performance.

A masterpiece, in short, and one that can be listened to again and again without exhausting its exuberant generosity.

Michael Oliver, GRAMOPHONE (1/1996) Review of original CD release

A good specimen of lateral thinking here: at least in as far as it crosses catalogues, years and performers, and comes up with a new combination. Here are three works for voice and orchestra, two choral, one for soloist, written between 1969 and 1974 (though I believe This Worlde's Joie also incorporates two settings from a Cantata in Praise of Love written in 1959). They have a good deal in common yet enough separate identity for them to comprise an acceptably varied programme, the Elegy for a Prince forming a relatively tough and tangy item to be sandwiched in between the choral collections. Of these, Ave Rex is a set of carols, ''Sir Christmas'' being now by far the best known, and This Worlde's Joie a cantata in four movements, nearly 50 minutes long, employing a boys' choir as well as the usual forces of soloists, mixed choir and orchestra.

This, of course, makes us think of Britten, and indeed it is difficult not to think of him, and to a lesser extent Tippett, throughout the disc. In his useful booklet-note, Geraint Lewis acknowledges this but expresses it in terms of ''occasional points of contact and homage'', which is probably excessively diplomatic. We are still, I think, too close to these composers of our time to avoid the word 'derivative': in a few more years it will probably not matter or affect enjoyment, which, irrespective of such questions, is still quite considerable. This Worlde's Joie moves delightfully from one good setting to another, always contriving to unify the structure and work effectively towards climax and contrast. The Prince of the Elegy is Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, killed by English soldiers in 1282: a stern mood prevails, the orchestral writing harder and more austere than the composer's usual style though it yields to some tender expression in the last section.

Sir Geraint Evans, who gave the Elegy's first performance at Llandaff in 1972, sings with authority and dark coloration (for the most part the tessitura is low, rising towards the end and finishing with a sustained soft high E). The soloists in the cantata are excellent and I couldn't help wondering why more was not heard on record of Janet Price. Willcocks and Atherton conduct with vigour and care for detail, and the recordings are admirably clean. In the original review of This Worlde's Joie Trevor Harvey found the words ''not all that clear'', but this seems largely to have been remedied, and indeed one of the best features of Mathias's writing for voices is that he is habitually careful to make the music serve the words and not obscure them.

-- Gramophone [2/1995]

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