Hubert Parry : Invocation to Music

At the Three Choirs Festival today,  Hubert Parry Invocation to Music (1895). Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and Three Choirs Festival chorus and soloists Katherine Broderick,  Mark Le Brocq and David Stout.  The concert begins with Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens , so well known that it hardly needs an introduction: with the Three Choirs Festival chorus, it's sure to be very good indeed, especially in this context. Also on the programme,  Parry's Symphony no 5, the Symphonic Fantasia,  which featured in Prom 17 - please read more HERE and HERE. So a few words about the Invocation to Music a grand "Ode in Honour of Henry Purcell" to use its official subtitle, written to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Purcell in 1895.

A splendid orchestral introduction to Parry's Invocation to Music, long string lines rising to crescendo, seguing into joyful processional.  "Myriad voiced Queen ! Enchantress !  of the air!" sing the choir ; magnificent rich textures, voice types clearly defined and separate. "Chained in unborn oblivion drear, thy many-hearted grace restore unto our Isle, our own to be ! And make again our Graces three"...... "Return, return to merry England, return, enchantress, myriad voiced Queen!" The text, by Robert Bridges is somewhat turgid - Parry wasn't terribly keen - but perhaps we can intuit what this Purcell revival meant to the late Victorian age, with its confidence and sense of imperial grandeur.  Thus the intertwining of choral parts and orchestra may be designed to form a garland in music.

Parry valued Purcell highly and ensured that his students did, too. But apart from the introduction, Parry's Invocation isn't so much "about" Purcell as about the ethical and moral mores of Parry's time.  Delicate woodwinds announce a more contemplative mood for the second section, "Thee, fair poetry" for tenor solo, decorated by murmuring orchestra.  Images of the countryside abound, but this landscape is strangely haunted, living in nostalgic memory rather than the present. "Only awhile the distant sun from hidden villages around, threading the glades and woody heights is borne of bells that dong the Sabbath morn"   This song is also a memorial to Parry's schoolfriend George Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, whio died young while the Invocation was being completed.  George was also  the brother of Parry's wife Maude, but that's another story.  Thus the very private tenderness: not at all a grand public statement, despite being embedded in an elaborate whole. One of the reasons why I'm so fond of Parry.  Though he wrote music for official occasions, there's often something humble and human if you listen more carefully.
Almost immediately, Parry switches back to "public mode" with the chorus "The monstrous sea" . Churning , monumental lines, trumpets calling forward, describing the "the orphaning waters wild and wide", sunken ships, a castle studded coastline  and the moon, which controls the tides.  "in the twinkling smile of  his boundless slumber, to the rhythmm of oars....when the waters have glowed with blood, and hearts have laughed in then fight"....O Muse of our Isle, to thee, to thee !".  Whether Bridges was connecting 17th century England to Victorain naval power, I don't know : the main thing is that, for Parry, a highly experienced sailor, this music heaves and surges like the sea and whatever that might represent.  From this maritime imagery, the soprano and tenor duet "Love to love calleth" might seem to echo Tristan und Isolde.  Hardly any composer anywhere in Europe was immune to Wagner, even those contra, so Parry can hardly be blamed for being aware of what was happening around him. All 19th century composers referenced German and Austrian musical tradition and built upon it : it would have been hard for any good composer to be isolationist.  Parry's approach was individual : more understated than florid, gentler and more humane.  Thus the Dirge for bass solo, "To me, to me, fair Goddess, come!" mourning again, possibly a hidden reference to George Herbert, though the section is dramatic and valedictory "Lament ! Lament, for when thy Seer died no song was sung".  A final strophe with valedictory orchestral depth as the bass intones "We ne'er arise to see... our tears as dew".
The seventh section "Man born of desire" is the longest and perhaps the most elegaic.  The chorus begins with hushed mystery but arises, accompanied by trumpets, in contemplation of the possible meaning of life.  "(Man) striveth to know, to unravel the mind, that veileth in horror to vanquish his fate.... no ill shall be...whence he came to pass away...umade, lost for aye, with things that are not".   As the Invocation draws to its cyclic conclusion, a more upbeat mood returns. Soprano, tenor and bass join the chorus for the ninth section "O enter with me the gates of delight"". Awakening from the "terror of night" the protagonists have reached "everlasting day".  "Night hath unlocked the starry heaven for thee, the sea, the trust of his streams.......and death has no sting for beauty undying".  As in the introduction, the different voices interwine gracefully.   Music, thus invoked, brings new life.  Infused with confidence, chorus andorchestra  triumphantly celebrate "O Queen of sinless grace" (meaning Music, not a temporal Queen) which shall "with a myriad voiced song go forth.... with the joy of Man in the beauty of Love's desire". 
Please see my other posts on Parry, especially the reviews of his English Lyrics CDs from SOMM

On Chosen Hill Gloucester, with Gerald Finzi

On Chosen Hill,  in Churchdown outside Gloucester, in summer.  Chosen Hill is one of those "power spots", like Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury, which seem to have the power to draw out positive energy.  Perhaps they connect to sites of prehistoric cosmology, to leylines or force fields or whatever; they seem charged.  For me,  it's a kind of "sacred site" with its connections to music and creativity.  Nearly every evening, Ivor Gurney used to trek up Chosen Hill from the city of Gloucester five miles below. You can still hike the path up through the wooded slopes he might have used: it's too steep to build on, and rather overgrown, but safer for walkers than  using the road for cars.  

Chosen Hill isn't really just a hill, but  a hill reconstructed as a mound during the Bronze Age, possibly a fort or site of religious significance, commanding a panoramic vista over the plains and estuary.  At its summit, the Normans built what is now St Bartholomew's.  Once I visited when the slope beside the church had collapsed in a  landslide.  The church was cordoned off, "Danger" signs warning people to keep away from the crumbling cliff.  When you're young, you think you're immortal, so I climbed over,  peering precariously over the buttress and looked at the exposed foundations.  Now the area is restored, and safe, and there's even a bench where you can sit and look out towards the ocean, but on this last visit, I got stuck on the steep grass verge where you're not supposed to walk. Luckily, I was saved – ordinary people can be guardian angels when they are in the right place at the right time.

In the early 1920's, shy, repressed city boy Gerald Finzi visited the Cotswolds for the first time. He met up with Detmar Blow and other arts and crafts types, who introduced him to exotic things like yoghurt and alternative living.  In the 1930's Finzi and his wife Joy, who knew herbal lore, set up Ashmansworth (near Newbury)  as a haven of natural self-sufficiency.  Decades later, when  Daniel Barenboim visited Jacqueline du Pré (Hilary Finzi's sister), he was horrified  by their hippie ways!

But first, back to Chosen Hill.  Below the church is a tiny cottage, low slung, almost invisible from the road. On New Year's Eve, 1925, Finzi went to a party there.  At midnight, the guests came outside, into sharp frost, the night sky filled with stars, and "heard bells ringing across  Gloucestershire from beside the Severn to the hill villages of the Cotswolds". Stephen Banfield, Finzi's biographer, calls this the "hilltop epiphany", for it released in Finzi a surge of original music. This was the inspiration for In Terra Pax and Nocturne whose sub-title is in fact New Year's Music, filled with bells and joy. Finzi needed an impetus to find himself and something happened that night under the stars. "I love New Year's Eve," he told a friend later, "Though it's the saddest time of the year..... a time of silence and quiet". And soon after asked himself "must knowledge come to me, if it comes at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by the familiar process (of reading other's work)?" ie,  Finzi was learning to trust his own artistic instincts.

Chosen Hill remained so dear to Finzi that in 1956 he took Ralph Vaughan Williams up the steep hill.  Presumably they drove in Finzi's big 50's car, since RVW was 83.  There are several photos of the two composers taken that week outside Gloucester Cathedral, where they were attending the Three Choirs Festival. The new tenants of the cottage in the churchyard had young children who were suffering from some childhood malady. Finzi's  immune system was weak, as he had cancer. He caught the children's illness, and three weeks later died in the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.  For Finzi, Chosen Hill marked a beginning and an end.  For me, being there this summer was also a kind of pilgrimage.  How blessed I felt! Please read my review of Mahler's Symphony no 8 at Gloucester Cathedral, highlight of this year's Three Choirs Festival. 

Photos: Roger Thomas

Three Choirs Festival Gloucester Elgar Parry

The Three Choirs Festival 2016 launched in glory at Gloucester Cathedral with Parry's Jerusalem and Elgar's The Kingdom. The "Holy City and The Heavenly Kingdom", a brilliant pairing which expresses what the Three Choirs Festival represents.  For three hundred years, the Three Choirs Festival has stood not only for musical excellence but also for communion, in the deepest sense of the word, bringing people together in the celebration of a glorious ideal.  

This wasn't the usual Jerusalem in its famous setting by Elgar but Parry's original, believed lost for decades until uncovered by Jeremy Dibble, whose 1992 biography of Parry restored Parry's status and reputation – essential reading.  Parry's orchestration isn't as lush as Elgar's, but the original is worth hearing for that very fact: Parry focuses on the questioning and on the irony in Blake's visionary poem. By setting the first verse for a single singer, Parry's setting emphasizes the provocative nature of Blake's conception. "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?".  In the full choral version, we get so carried away by crowd enthusiasm that we don't question. In Parry's version, however, Blake's irony is made more clear.  And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?" Bluntly, the answer is "No" So much for simplistic certainties. We may not get the glorious flourishes of Elgar's orchestration, but we do get an insight into Parry. Please read my piece on Jerusalem HERE.

In  Elgar's The Kingdom, the apostles are about to embark on their journey which still continues 2000 years later. For all the grandeur and vast forces involved, at its heart,  the piece is humble though assertive. The apostles are ordinary men serving a higher cause. Saints aren't superhuman beings but human beings inspired to do extraordinary things, inspired by faith and love.

Elgar dreamed of writing a trilogy of oratorios examining the nature of Christianity as Jesus taught his followers, using the grand context of the Edwardian taste. In The Apostles, Jesus sets out his beliefs in simple, human terms. Judas doubts him and is confounded. In The Kingdom, the focus is more diffuse. The disciples are many and their story unfolds through a series of tableaux, impressive set pieces, but with less obvious human drama. The final part would have been titled The Last Judgement, when World and Time are destroyed and the faithful of all ages are raised from the dead, joining Jesus in Eternity. The sheer audacity of that vision may have stymied Elgar, much in the way that Sibelius's dreams for his eighth symphony inhibited realization. Fragments of The Last Judgement made their way into drafts for what was to be Elgar's third and final symphony, which we now know in Anthony Payne's performing version.  There are familiar themes from The Apostles in The Kingdom, so context helps. But the fact that the trilogy wasn't completed is in itself a refection on the fact the mission isn't complete and won't be until the End of Time, hopefully not in the foreseeable future, though things might not quite seem that way sometimes.  Please read  HERE about The Apostles at the Three Choirs in Worcester in 2014.

The Kingdom unfolds in a dignified procession, a series of tableaux each savoured witha measured pace, the intervals between them providing pauses for contemplation.   Interestingly, The Kingdom focuses on female figures. Does this reflect Elgar's Catholicism, and his personal beliefs? The contralto has lovely passages, and the soprano has the glorious "The sun goeth down" and dialogues with the solo violin.

At Gloucester Cathedral last night Adrian Partington conducted the combined choruses of the Three Choirs, the Philharmonia Orchestra with soloists Claire Rutter, Sarah Connolly, Ashley Riches, and the youthful Magnus Walker, replacing James Oxley at short notice.  I booked my tickets months ago, but unexpectedly couldn't attend. You'd think ticket returns would be as valuable as gold, but I was so fortunate to be able to give mine to very cherished friends, not Elgar aficionados, but good and decent people, who had a wonderful time. For me, sharing the gift of the Three Choirs is almost as good as being there! 

Exciting Three Choirs Festival Gloucester 2016

Gloucester Cathedral hosts the 2016 Three Choirs Festival. Click here for my review of Mahler Symphony no 8.  "The Holy City and the Heavenly Kingdom" is the theme of the opening concert on 23rd July, a pairing  of Parry's Jerusalem with Elgar's The Kingdom. Especially exciting because this Jerusalem won't be the familiar version but Parry's original, uncovered a few years ago by Parry specialist Jeremy Dibble, whose 1992  biography restored Parry's true status. By setting the first verse for a single singer, Parry's setting emphasizes the provocative nature of Blake's conception. "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?".  In the full choral version, we get so carried away by crowd enthusiasm that we don't question. In Parry's version, however, Blake's irony is made more clear.  And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?" Bluntly, the answer is "No" So much for simplistic certainties. We may not get the glorious flourishes of Elgar's orchestration, but we do get an insight into Parry. Please read my piece on Jerusalem HERE

The Three Choirs Festival, though, is Elgar territory par excellence  so devotees will be out in force for Elgar's The Kingdom, which follows on from The Apostles  and would have culminated in a piece about the Last Judgement, which was never completed. It helps to imagine it, though, because it puts the Kingdom into context. The apostles are about to embark on their journey, a mission which still continues 2000 years later. For all the grandeur and vast forces,  the piece is humble though assertive. The apostles are ordinary men serving a higher cause.  This will be a showcase for the magnificent Three Choirs Festival Chorus, probably the finest flowering of the whole British choral tradition. Adrian Partington will conduct The Kingdom  with the Three Festivals Chorus, the Philharmonia Orchestra and soloists.  Read  HERE about The Kingdom at the Proms with Andrew Davis. and  HERE about The Apostles at the Three Choirs in Worcester in 2014. In the TV broadcast of the BBC Proms The Kingdom, I'm on screen a lot, a tiny figure dressed in white in the stalls near the choirs, participating in spirit.

 Although members of the three constituent cathedral choirs have been meeting annually since around 1719, the Three Choirs Festival is infinitely more than about music. It's a communal celebration of those who believe in the spiritual ideals of fellowship. Every performance starts with prayer, there's evensong each evening and the eucharist is celebrated on Sunday. Indeed, for many, singing is a form of prayer. "For God is in all things". Although I am not C of E - neither was Elgar - one of the things I love about the Three Choirs Festival is how genuinely nice  the people are. The staff could not be more helpful, and audience members welcome you like you belong.   
 
More landmarks of the choral  tradition follow: Mendelssohn's Elijah on Monday 25th, conducted by Peter Nardone, Berlioz Grand Messe des morts on Wednesday 27th conducted by Edward Gardner. On Friday 29th, Rossini Petite Messes solonnelle, 11,am conducted by Geraint Bowen,  A fascinating juxtaposition that evening with  "Carmina and Enigma"  Carl Orff  Carmina Burana plus Elgar Enigma Variations and on Saturday 30th,  Mahler  Symphony No 8, conducted by Adrian Partington.  

The Three Choirs Festival is also a celebration of British music and composers.  In the Cathedral on Tuesday 26th "England's Glory", music by Vaughan Williams and Butterworth, plus numerous concerts in other venues featuring composers like Gurney, Finzi, Howells, Ireland, and others, plus talks thereon. Most interesting, for me, the concert on Sunday afternoon in Cirencester which features Howells's Requiem and Philip Lancaster's new work War Passion.  As always with the Three Choirs plenty of talks on history, the Three Choirs heritage, Shakespeare (Hamlet this year), plus movies and the society lunches. For more details,  HERE IS THE FESTIVAL BOOKLET

Mendelssohn Elias (Elijah) Rheingau Festival

Thomas Ollemans sings the title part in Mendelssohn's Elias (Elijah) Op 70  at the Rheingau Musik- Festival in 2015, with the Akademie für Alte Musik conducted by Hans-Christoph Rademann, with the RIAS Kammerchor and soloists Marlis Petersen, .Lioba Braun and Maximillian Schmidt. 

I'm hoping to hear Elijah at the Three Choirs Festival this summer in Gloucester Cathedral with the Three Choirs Choir, which combines the formidable forces of the combined choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester which make the Three Choirs Festival a momentous experience. Mendelssohn's oratorios are very much a part of the English choral tradition. Elijah was written for and premiered in Birmingham in 1846. But I have a weakness for Elias, sung in German, having learned it from the wonderful 1993 recording with Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and choir and soloists Theo Adam, Elly Ameling,  Annalies Burmeister and Peter Schreier.  In German, Elias just seems to sound craggier and more uncompromising than in English: important, I think, to interpretation, for Elijah was a hardbitten prophet of the Old Testament, having more in common with the Lutheran values of the Reformation than with the established Church of England, despite the superlative choral singing we so often get with English Elijahs (especially at the Three Choirs Festival). 

With its period instruments and spare textures the Akademie für Alte Musik creates the spare gritty texture I love so much in Mendelssohn, a composer much tougher and more assertive than many give him credit for. It helps, too, that this performances employs only 34 chorus members, nothing near the 270 at the Birmingham premiere. Also, the abbey at Rheingau is small enough to concentrate sound: the cameras focus thoughtfully on its rough-hewn stone columns and walls.  Elijah connects to something much deeper and more personal in Mendelssohn's spirit. Ollemans is striking: from the very first, his Elias carries authority "So wahr der Herr, der Gott Israels lebet, vor dem ich stehe" The Overture that follows feels like an extension of this message.  

A drought has descended on the land, the people are dying. Elijah appears in the desert, revives the widow's son and prays, successfully,  for rain. The people are happy, but as so often, success attracts jealousy. Ahab prefers Baal. On Mount Horeb, Elijah is joined by angels. In this performance, the singing in Part 2 is gently lyrical: this beauty contrasts well with the resolute firmness that has gone before.  Thus the kindness that permeates the final chorus, where the emphasis is on enlightenment, not triumphalism  "Alsdann wird euer Licht hervorbrechen wie die Morgenröte, und eure Besserung wird schnell wachsen, und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird euch zu sich nehmen". Quite close, I think, to Mendelssohn's core values. 

Three Choirs Festival Hereford 2015

The full programme for the 2015 Three Choirs Festival, this year at Hereford, has been announced.  Many juicy nuggets and surprises, reflecting Artistic Director Geraint Bowen's  lively approach to this unique and ever-developing Festival. This year, the combined choirs of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester will be joined for the first time by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment,  supplementing now regular visitors like the Philharmonia Orchestra. The OAE will be able to expand the Festival repertoire in imaginative directions.

As always, the "big" events in the Cathedral form the foundations of the Three Choirs tradition. This year's first evening concert, on Saturday 25th July, features Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, (Please read more here).  Sarah Connolly. Peter Auty and Neal Davies, with Geraint Bowen conducting the Philharmonia. I recommend going early to Hereford, to take part in the Opening service (Purcell and Handel), because Three Choirs is more than just a music festival; it is also a celebration of religious faith, which defines the whole spirit of the Festival. Go, whatever God you adhere to, because faith and hope connect all religions.  Plus, you'll be able to attend Roderick Williams' afternoon recital "Song of the Hero". Williams will be singing Elgar's Sea Pictures for baritone and piano - unusual, and surprisingly powerful. It's been in his repertoire for some time (e.g. at the Oxford Lieder Festival). He'll also be singing lesser-known songs by Vaughan Williams and Howells and a new commission by Rhian Samuel. This is an important concert, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. (date unknown)

On Sunday 26th July, Olivier Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie - a truly spectacular celebration of life, love and nature. , not something which one might associate with staid English church traditions, but a deeply felt, spiritual work, nonetheless. Messiaen was extremely devout, and an organist, who played at Mass almost every day for many decades.  It will be interesting to hear how the symphony fills the space in this Cathedral. Certainly, the sound of the ondes martenot will carry well.  Jac van Steen conducts the Philharmonia with Steven Osborne (pianist) and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes martenot).

"Requiem for 500 years"  on Monday 27th, a good concert of very early music with the Orlando Consort, followed by a talk on Agincourt, the decisive battle which separated England from France, 700 years ago. This is Arthur Bliss Day, too, with a rare performance of his Morning Heroes, a song symphony from 1930, in memory of Bliss's brother who died in the Great War. It's narrated by Samuel West, and conducted by Andrew Davis. On Tuesday "Three Centuries in one afternoon", continuing the theme of historical context, and Bach St Matthew Passion in the evening. On Wednesday, we move forward to 1715, with a concert built around Vivaldi The Cuckoo, wildly popular in England at the time, performed by Italian baroque specialists La Serenissima. In the evening, Beethoven Missa Solemnis. At Dore Abbey, Roy Strong presents "Poets and Princes" an entertainment on the English Monarchy, followed, ironically, by a talk on the Jacobite rebellion. The keynote concert that evening will be Carl Neilsen's Hymnus Amoris, coupled with William Mathias (d 1992) Lux Aeterna. Verdi Requiem on Friday night. The Festival concludes with "The Gathering Wave" a community participation event. Lots more - plays, talks, visits, chamber concerts - peruse the programme, looking for the hidden gems.

Three Choirs Festival - Elgar, Rasch, Germans and British

The Three Choirs Festival, which began more than 300 years ago, is the oldest music festival in the western world. Instead of competing, the choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford  came together to share their faith through music. That sense of co-operation is very much a part of Christian tradition. As Jesus taught "Love thy neighbour as thyself". If only people could live by that concept, whatever their faith. Conflicts breed when people can't get that simple, basic tenet into their heads.

The Three Choirs Festival is much more than just a  music festival. Fundamentally, it represents the best of Christian values. Thus the Three Choirs Festival decided to mark the outbreak of the First World War with a special programme "Reflections on 1914", bringing together British and German musicians and composers. I wish I'd been there (though I greatly enjoyed Elgar The Apostles the following evening (review here). Fortunately, the programme can now be heard on BBC Radio 3 here.

Baldur Brönnimann specializes in new music, so he revealed  Elgar's Spirit of England  in all its true magnificence. The piece has suffered from the more belligerent aspects of Lawrence Binyon's texts, and from worthy but unquestioning performance practice. Binyon equates war with Spring and regrowth. England  "fights the fraud that feeds desire on Lies, in lust to enslave or kill, The barren creed of blood and iron," Brönnimann instead emphasizes the innate optimism in the music. Whatever the "spirit of England" might be, it can be glorious and idealistic as well as bloodthirsty.  Brönnimann emphasizes the innate glory of the music. Brönnimann's Spirit of England applies to all men (and women).

 Brönnimann brings out the forward pulse, highlighting the economy with which Elgar builds up textures so they feel alive and sprightly. Slow hushed moments give rise to soaring themes (great woodwinds!). "We shall remember them!" sing the choirs and Peter Hoare, the soloist, sings  They have not died in vain if they're remembered in a performance as glistening and passionate as this. "Age shall not weary them" was truly expressed in the freshness of the playing of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Such clarity, such purity, surpassing the revered recordings of the past, setting new standards. Using a tenor instead of a soprano helped, too. Peter Hoare's voice is still youthful enough to suggest the soldiers who marched off, never to return.  While a female singer suggests Boadicea, a male voice is more personal and direct, making us think of the real people who sacrificed all for "the spirit of England".

Matthew Trusler was the soloist in Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending. This is a work so beautiful that it transcends time and place, evoking powerful responses in all who hear it.  Usually I'm fixated on the violin part, but this time, the lushness of the Philharmonia's playing added a marvellous veil of poignant mystery.

The Three Choirs Festival is very English, but Torsten Rasch grew up in a similar tradition. He was a boy chorister with the Dresdner Kreuzchor, which produced Peter Schreier and Rudolf Mauersberger (lots about them on this site too). Rasch's music embraces wider genres.  He emigrated to Japan as a young man and has worked in theatre, film and multimedia.  Read more about him here.  Loosely based on British Evensong which combines song with readings, Rasch brings together the words of poets from opposing sides in the war - Georg Trakl, Edward Thomas and the Dymock poets, finding common ground, so to speak, particularly in the Latin passages.. Rasch's music is modern enough to sound unworldly, but accessible enough to feel dramatic. We hear intimations of conflict in jarring, expansive passages that disintegrate into dark rumblings, yet also bell sounds and subtle pastoral. At Worcester, people who'd heard it told me that they'd been quite intrigued. I especially liked the way the music seemed to revolve like the movement of a sphere.

 A Foreign Field is a Three Choirs Festival Commission, but it's also being shared with Chemnitz, a city heavily bombed in 1945 by the British.  In 1918 savage reparations led to to the Second World War. In 1945, the Marshall Plan broke the cycle of hate, rebuilding a new Germany which is now a force for peace.

Thus the importance of conciliation, and the guiding moral spirit behind the Three Choirs Festival. Just as the Three Choirs Festival is about more than music, Torsten Rasch's A Foreign Field represents idea as well as sounds. Roderick Williams, Peter Hoare and Yeree Suh were joined by the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, the Chorus of the Three Cathedral Choirs and singers from Die Kantorei der Kreuzkirche, Chemnitz, in a highly symbolic coming together. Thus it was all the more offensive that a chorister was reported as having impersonated Hitler and made joking references to Auschwitz, (here). Whatever the situation, this isn't funny. Even though Christians forgive, there is far too much casual, unthinking nastiness about to simply ignore such things. It's not just one individual but a mindset that goes largely unchallenged.

Three Choirs Festival Worcester Elgar The Apostles

Hearing Elgar at the Three Choirs Festival is an experience without parallel. The Three Choirs tradition goes back 300 years, but is so closely connected to Elgar that his spirit seems to hover. Elgar grew up here: understanding the world in which he lived enhances appreciation of his music. Three Choirs regulars (and the staff) are special, too.  They come for fraternity as much as for music, so theyre unusually kind and friendly, "The best of England" in so many ways. Elgar's  The Apostles has been heard in London several times in the last few years, but there is absolutely nothing quite like hearing it in Worcester, and at the Three Choirs Festival. 

As the introduction to the Apostles unfolded,  Adrian Partington conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Youth Choir created an atmosphere of reverence: those gently circulating sonorities might perhaps suggest the movement of cosmic forces. Indeed, Jesus is about to reveal the Beatitudes to his followers. Yet Elgar made great efforts to include the shofar, the valveless trumpet of Judaic tradition, thus connecting the new faith of Jesus to a much more ancient past. In the acoustic of Worcester Cathedral, the sound reverberated around the building. I've never heard it done with such overwhelming impact. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, who used physical space as part of performance, would have been impressed. How strange and exotic the shofar must have sounded when first heard by Edwardian audiences!  At Worcester, the impact verged on the point of danger, for indeed, the disciples are setting off on a mission into the unknown.  Christians would suffer for their faith, as have the Jews.  There's no need to minimize the portent. Partington places the shofar player high above the orchestra, near the young sopranos who will later sing Alleujia llke a host of angels, distant enough from the audience but not too distant in meaning, It's theologically astute and works well as music.

Partington is an extremely sensitive choral conductor. Three Choirs Festival  Chorus members know him well. This was choral singing of exceptional clarity and character truly worthy of the occasion. Component parts were distinctly defined. One could hear how they operate together, as groups of individuals united by common purpose. Indeed, it was almost as if the score were coming alive. Three Choirs choruses never disappoint, but this was wonderful.

In comparison, the soloists were relatively uneven, but that's no demerit, given the excellence of the choirs  The  male soloists were a solid foundation, the rock on which Elgar''s music is built. How jolly the apostles sounded together when they first sang "We are the the servants of the Lord"!  The theme recurs repeatedly throughout the music, and  we can identify with them through their trials and tribulations. John Mark Ainsley, Brindley Sherratt and Neal Davies are "luxury casting", strikingly characterized. With his doubts and uncertainties, Judas is a role which modern audiences can relate to. Sherratt (fresh from singing Strauss at the Proms the previous evening - review here) is the bass of choice in this piece because he sings Judas Iscariot with such personality that he creates the part as a personality.  When he repeated the words "Darkness", he made the horror feel palpable. It's a tricky part, with a sudden leap up the scale on "vanish".,plunging to the depths again on the final "darkness".

Marcus Farnsworth sang a steady, youthful Jesus, radiating sincerity. Sarah Fox and Claudia Huckle sang the soprano and mezzo parts.

The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the best in this country, and their presence has been a great advantage. If the storm sequence seemed somewhat underpowered, they made up for things later: bright, vivid brass, quirkily agile high clarinets, striking horns, lustrous strings and the rolling thunder of the timpani.. But we go to the Three Choirs Festival for more than performance. We go for the astonishing beautiful choirs, for the atmosphere, for the camaraderie, all of which add up to value-added music. "We are the servants of the Lord ! We go forth to the ends of the Earth!" Next year in Hereford!

The photo above, by Mattana, 2008, reveals Jesus and his Apostles in Worcester Cathedral. During the Three Choirs Festival, they're hidden behind the performance space, but we know they're there in spirit. Please read my other posts on Elgar The Apostles, on Elgar, and on Three Choirs  by clicking in the labels below.

Three Choirs Festival - Reflections on 1914 Elgar Rasch

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The Three Choirs Festival began more than 300 years ago. Perhaps it is the oldest music festival in the western world. The exact start date is unknown: members of the choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford  decided to join together and sing. That sense of community and cooperation, is very much a part of Christian tradition. As Jesus taught "Love they neighbour as thyself". If only people could live by that concept, whatever their faith.

Next week we mark the centenary of the day on which Britain declared war on Germany. Thus began a conflict that, arguably, continued until 1945. Would the cycle of attack and revenge have continued?  Instead of punitive reparations, the US introduced the Marshall Plan: victors supporting the welfare of the defeated.  Mutual humanity. Some - certainly not all - Britons might still relish foreign wars (on behalf of other states) but Germany has becomes a force for peace. In this spirit I salute (perhaps the wrong choice of word) the Three Choirs Festival for its concert tonight, Reflections on 1914.

"Spirit of England, go before us !" the soprano sings at the start of Edward Elgar's The Spirit of England. The melody echoes, gloriously,  in the solo violin, recurring and uniting the piece, its warmth suggesting sunny confidence. . Lawrence Binyon's poem "The Fourth of August", written in the heat of the moment, refers to the "grandeur of our fate". Binyon even equates war with Spring and regrowth. England  "fights the fraud that feeds desire on Lies, in lust to enslave or kill, The barren creed of blood and iron," The photo above shows officers of the Worcestershire Regiment posing before they're sent to the Front in 1914. How many would survive?

Perhaps Elgar wasn't quite so belligerent. He sets the middle section (loosely based on Binyon's To Women, in a more reflective key, ushering in the final section "To the Fallen". Trumpets blare and a march-like rhythm emerges. "The enemies of England|" are still a threat. At last the meaning of death sinks in. The text comes from Binyon's most famous poem, To The Fallen. "We will remember them" repeats the soprano, her melody taken up by the chorus, and at times a melancholy cello. .Boadicea-like, the soprano's voice soars. even as the orchestra becomes hushed. "As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain."

Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending  can mean many things but in this context, one might reflect on its melancholy. Something very beautiful is being glimpse, but through a haze of nostalgia. Perhaps when the violin soars upwards, we could be thinking of transcendence, deliverance, or timless release? Music doesn't exist just in notes but in our emotional response.

 Two of the greatest British composers, responding to a war that would change their world, and a youngish German composer who has travelled the world, reflecting on what went before him.  Torsten Rasch grew up in a tradition very close to the Three Choirs: he was a boy chorister with the Dresdner Kreuzchor, which produced Peter Schreier and Rudolf Mauersberger (lots about them on this site too). Rasch's music embraces wider genres. He emigrated to Japan as a young man and has worked in theatre, film and multimedia.  Read more about him here.

Torsten Rasch's A Foreign Field is a Three Choirs commission, (in connection with Chemnitz Opera) continuing the Festival's support for new music in its core repertoire. "It's not a Requiem" says Rasch. He uses the British Evensong tradition to bring together English and German poems texts by poets who served on opposite sides in 1914-18 - Ivor Gurney, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl. Below a sample

BBC First Night of the Proms 2014 Elgar The Kingdom

  

Sir Edward Elgar's The Kingdom, First Night of the BBC Proms 2014. A magnificent start to the season, particularly one which commemorates 1914, the start of the First World War. From that perspective Sir Andrew Davis's The Kingdom moved me deeply.

Elgar dreamed of writing a trilogy of oratorios examining the nature of Christianity as Jesus taught his followers, using the grand context of the Edwardian taste. In The Apostles, Jesus sets out his beliefs in simple, human terms. Judas doubts him and is confounded. In The Kingdom, the focus is more diffuse. The disciples are many and their story unfolds through a series of tableaux, impressive set pieces, but with less obvious human drama. The final, part would hase been titled The Last Judgement, when World and Time are destroyed and the faithful of all ages are raised from the dead, joining Jesus in Eternity. The sheer audacity of that vision may have stymied Elgar, much in the way that Sibelius's dreams for his eighth symphony inhibited realization. Fragments of The Last Judgement made their way into drafts for what was to be Elgar's third and final symphony, which we now know in Anthony Payne's performing version. There could be many reasons why Elgar didn't proceed, but he may well have intuited the contradiction between simple faith and extravagant gesture.

In his excellent programme notes, Stephen Johnson describes The Kingdom "as a kind of symphonic 'slow movement', a pause between two much more monumental pillars. It doesn't exist on its own out of context, and can't really be judged as a stand-alone. Elgar's creative output declined after the First World War. Since we know the wars that followed, listening to this piece is even more poignant. The Kingdom is a fragment of a confident but doomed past. I also like The Kingdom because, like The Apostles, it portrays Jesus and his followers are down-to-earth ordinary men and women encountering events normal comprehension. They're not pious saints but simple folk with fears and insecurities, saved by faith.

 

Andrew Davis conducted the Prelude with sober dignity. The disciples are starting a journey that continues 2000 years later. Davis's tempi were unhurried, with just enough liveliness to suggest the excitement of hopes to come. There are familiar themes from The Apostles here, and lyrical passages, which Davis conducted with particular finesse. I watched his hands sculpt curving shapes, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra responded well. Nice bright horns, seductive lower winds. The long pauses with which Davis marked the different parts of the piece serve a purpose, but tended to break the flow. However, Davis masterfully contrasted extreme of volume and relative quietness, giving dramatic structure. 

When the combined forces of the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the BBC Symphony Chorus entered, the effect was splendid. This is what good choral singing should be: lush richness yet brightened by sharp, disciplined diction, individual sections clearly defined within the mass.  These Christians march forwards but don't lose themselves  to the multitude. Unsurprisngly, the chorus masters were two of the best in the genre: Adrian Partington (of Three Choirs fame) and Stephen Jackson. 

The soloists were Erin Wall (Mary the Virgin), Catherine Wyn-Rogers (Mary Magdalene), Andrew Staples (St John) and Christopher Purves (St Peter). All are extremely reliable, and well experienced in large choral repertoire, and they delivered well. Staples, however, was unusually  expressive. His firm, animated tenor seemed to shine from the dense textures in the music around him. The Kingdom unfolds like a procession of tableaux, each savoured at a measured pace, so Staples provided welcome individuality.

Interestingly, The Kingdom focuses on female figures. The contralto (Wyn-Rogers)  has lovely recitatives and the soprano (Erin Wall) has the glorious"The sun goeth down".  The female choruses have good music, too,  and were very brightly coloured and lively. Davis highlighted the relationship between solo voices and instruments, such as the dialogue between Wall and the First Violin, Stephen Bryant. The Kingdom is a showpiece, not because it's flamboyant but because it's restrained.  More a prolonged recitative than an aria, but without recvitatives to hold the drama together, where would we be ? It's better, in many ways, to start the BBC Proms season with something esoteric than with something crude. 

This review also appears in Opera Today. Each year I cover around 40 Proms, so please keeping coming back. Please also read my other posts on Elgar, on Three Choirs, The Apostles, Caractacus, The Dreeam of Gerontius, The Powicj  musiuc and so on.

Prelude to Elgar The Kingdom First Night of the Proms

Edward Elgar The Kingdom at the First Night of the BBC Proms, hot ticket in more ways than one. My review is HERE.  I shall brave the heat of the Royal Albert Hall and make the pilgrimage. As I predicted before this year's Proms were announced The Kingdom is an ideal blockbuster with which to start the Proms season. Oddly enough it was last heard at the Proms in 1999, though it's been done 8 times since 1930. Andrew Davis conducted the BBC SO  then - it will be interesting to hear him conduct it fifteen years later  The Kingdom is big, grand and appeals to those who like pomp and circumstance. Absolutely the stuff to capture national pride and what Teddy Roosevelt, Elgar's contemporary, called "Viggah". As long as they don't really listen. Once I was scolded by an "expert" who knew everything because he'd heard of "Elgar's two symphonies". Heard of, not heard, methinks.

But I love Elgar because I intuit something very different in his music, something much more complex, even more contradictory. Like Benjamin Britten, Elgar reveals himself once you get past the mask that's been imposed upon him by his public status.

The Kingdom is a counterpart of The Apostles, about which I've written HERE. In The Apostles, Jesus describes the Beatitudes to his followers.  In The Kingdom, Jesus's followers are moved at Pentecost by the image of a dove, reminding them of  his message "Lo,  I am with you always, even unto the end of the world". Ideally it would be nice to hear The Apostles and The Kingdom together but that would be a logistical nightmare, and wear everyone out, listeners as well as performers.  So I'm thrilled about hearing The Kingdom tonight and hearing The Apostles again at the Three Choirs Festival this year in Worcester, Elgar's birthplace. There will be lots oif Elgar-related excursions and activities, as well as music. It does help to get The Spirit of Elgar via The Spirit of England, in the form of the places Elgar knew and loved. Long ago, I used to traipse round the Malverns, in the footsteps of Elgar, Gurney, Howells and so on, getting a feel for the landscape that inspired them. . Maybe I'll do the circuit again in autumn with its mood of melancholy.

As a taster for tonight's The Kingdom at The Proms two historic recordings, the first Elgar himself, the second, Isobel Baillie singing "The Sun goeth down".

Elgar The Kingdom - for the Forward Thinking

After hearing Andrew Davis conduct Elgar The Apostles (op 49, 1902-3) at the Barbican (read my review here), I decided to revist its companion piece, The Kingdom op 51 (1901-6). The Kingdom is ideal material for the BBC Proms because it's spectacular and needs a space as grandiose as the Royal Albert Hall. Oddly enough it was last heard at the Proms in 1999, though it's been done 8 times since 1930. Andrew Davis conducted the BBC SO  then - it would be interesting to hear him conduct it fifteen years later   Mark Elder conducted the most recent recording (2011) of the Kingdom and also of the Apostles (2012), both with the Hallé, already well revered in Elgar's time. All the more reason to be intrigued as to when it will be done again and by whom  HUGE GRIN !!!!!!!

Elgar's The Apostles will crown this year's Three Choirs Festival at Worcester, Elgar's home town.  The massive computer glitch that hit the box office has been fixed, so it's worth seeing what's left. Please read my summary of the 2014 Three Choirs Festival HERE. I'm a regular devotee.

Three Choirs Festival Worcester 2014

Tickets go on sale 15/4 for the 2014 Three Choirs Festival, this year in Worcester, the city where Elgar grew up. This is also the first year the Festival has been curated by Dr Peter Nardone. Moreover, this year marks the centenary of the beginning of the First World War. The Three Choirs Festival mirrors a type of Englishness that has survived centuries of strife and change. Perhaps we can better appreciate that "Spirit of England" by engaging with The Three Choirs Festival and what it represents.

This year's Three Choirs opens on Saturday 26th July. Perhaps the Opening Service at 11.30 in Worcester Cathedral will mean more than usual, given what is being commemorated. You don't have to be a Christian to care. We all share (I trust) universal faith in goodness, humanity and hope. At 2.30,  Roderick Williams, easily the greatest baritone in this genre, presents a recital on The Great War in English Song, built around George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad. Butterworth was killed in the Somme in 1916. There's a lot about him on this site, including something I found in the War Office archives which no one had found before. Please use the "Butterworth" label at right.

This year, London's Globe Theatre  tours to Worcester: a very special event indeed. The Globe will be doing Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing at 3.30 in the College Hall. T.hen, at 745 in Worcester Cathedral itself, Britten's War Requiem. Britten wasn't a Three Choirs regular, and the piece isn't conventionally religious. Please read what I've written about the War Requiem, Britten and Britten's pacifism on this site, using the labels at right. If ever there was an occasion when the Three Choirs ethic and Britten dovetail, this will be it. This War Requiem could be a coming-together on a very deep level.

Many concerts during Sunday 27th. Alternatively, you could visit Elgar's Birtthplace at Broadheath three  miles from the city centre. Excellent museum, with very well stocked CD shop. There will be other opportunities to visit during the week, and specially curated Walking Tours through the countryside Elgar was so fond of visiting. Sunday night will be a good chance to savour Three Choirs hospitality at the King's Hall - Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding! After which one will be well fortified for Dvořák’s Stabat Mater in Worcester Cathedral, which Dvořák himself conducted at the Three Choirs Festival in 1884. The Choirs was very much in the vanguard of "new" European music when it was new.

This tradition continues: On Thursday, 31/7 in Worcester Cathedral, Torsten Rasch A Foreign Field will receive its premiere. It's a Three Choirs commission,  and will be heard with Elgar's The Spirit of England and Vaughan Williams' A Lark Ascending. The concert, titled Reflections of 1914, will be another significant coming-together. Two of the greatest British composers, responding to a war that would change their world, and a youngish German composer who has travelled the world, reflecting on what went before him.  Rasch grew up in a tradition very close to the Three Choirs: he was a boy chorister with the Dresdener Kreuzchor, which produced Peter Schreier and Rudolf Mausberger (lots about them on this site too). Rasch's music embraces wider genres. He emigrated to Japan as a young man and has worked in theatre, film and multi media.  Read more about him here.

But without Elgar, no Three Choirs Festival would be complete. This year's Elgar highlight will be The Apostles, on Friday,1st August in Worcester Cathedral. This is a hugely ambitious, even extravagant work and should be stunning with the massed choirs. Good cast, too : Andrew Kennedy, Brindley Sherratt, Sarah Fox, Claudia Huckle, Neal Davis, Marcus Farnsworth, conducted by Adrian Partington. This week  BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting Mark Elder's Proms Apostles which I wrote about here. The photo shows Elgar conducting The Apostles in Worcester at the 1905 Three Choirs Festival. Don't recognize the organ? The performance took place in The Public Hall, Worcester, demolished in 1966 when the city centre was rebuilt. .

Three Choirs Festival Gloucester 2013

What other music Festival can claim a 300-year history? This year marks the 286th Three Choirs Festival, an event central to British music .It's also much more than a music festival. Some people have been regulars for well over 70 years! When the Festival is held in Hereford and Worcester, it's worth booking for a week to enjoy the community dinners, talks and  Shakespeare plays. This year the Festival takes place in Gloucester, just off the M4 from London, and easily reached by train.The Festival Choir is made up of the finest singers from the choirs of all three cathedrals connected to the Festival. In fact, the choirs are its raison d'être, so make a point of listening to at least one of the big choral programmes, even though there's plenty else going on. 

The Three Choirs Festival never loses focus from its original aim, and always starts with an Opening Service and a good choice of music. There's a full Eucharist on Sunday, and a Choral Evensong is usually broadcast by the BBC. The evening Gala on 27/7, however, features Elgar, Rachmaninov and Sibelius. Vladimir Ashkenazy conducts London's Philharmonia Orchestra on Saturday 27th July. Helena Juntunen, the Finnish soprano, sings Sibelius Luonnotar. This could be amazing in the acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral, because the voice part soars and expands outwards. Luonnotar is the spirit of Nature, reaching out across the oceans and the universe, defying cataclysm and time itself. Attend the pre-concert talk and read my article "Luonnotar : Creating the Universe" here. The highlight of the evening, though, will be Rachmaninov's The Bells. Juntunen will be joined by Paul Nilon and Nathan Berg, but the real stars should be the vast mixed voices of the Festival Choir. Imagine hearing the "bells" in the symphony and remembering the bells of the Cathedral and churches around it!

Christmas in July?  On the afternoon of 30/7 there will be an unusual Handel Messiah. The acclaimed early music ensemble, the Dunedin Consort,  will be performing with a good specialist cast led by Rosemary Joshua. Hearing the Festival Chorus in this will be special, for they sing the "story" every Sunday of their lives.  Elgar is another mainstay of the Three Choirs Festival, and The Dream of Gerontius features frequently. This year's Dream will be good, with Kai Rüütel singing the Angel. She was a member of thge Royal Opera House's Young Artist's programme and has presence. She was a distinctive Flora in La Traviata and a good Rhinemaiden in the ROH Ring. She's singing with Toby Spence, who has his own miracle to be glad of, and Matthew Rose. There is also a n Elgar rarity, Falstaff, a four part symphonic studyb that loosely follows Shakespeare's play. A pre concert talk will give its background.

There will also be many recitals, including Wayne Marshall, Philip Lancaster, Andrew Kennedy and Roderick Williams, who is doing a particularly intriguing and probably unique programme. Interesting repertoire, too: Paul Hindemith's Das Marienleben in English, with a pre-performance talk. Read more about Das Marienleben here.

The Three Choirs Festival also showcases important large-scale British works that aren't often performed because the forces they require aren't easy to put together. This year's rarity is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's complete The Song of Hiawatha, a major multi-section work for large choir and orchestra. The Three Choirs Festival has a special connection with Coleridge-Taylor, since the Festival gave him his first major public performances, on the recommendation of Edward Elgar, no less. (For more on Coleridge-Taylor's life, see these British Library pages.)

In its time, The Song of Hiawatha was a big success, feeding the public appetite for extravagant exotica.  Coleridge-Taylor might have been drawn to Hiawatha because of Longfellow's odd, vaguely "primitive" rhythms and repetitive phrasing. They suggested a way in which non-white traditions might be incorporated into western classical culture. Coleridge-Taylor's father was mixed-race African, although he grew up as an Englishman and had little contact with "native" culture, but he was perceptive enough to pick up on the possibilities. The Song of Hiawatha was completed fifteen years before Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. By the time The Rite of Spring was premiered, Coleridge-Taylor had been dead for a year. Coleridge-Taylor wasn't nearly as radical as Stravinsky, but we should consider him in context.  He was born 4 months after Maurice Ravel. Ravel mined his Basque heritage to experiment with new approaches to music. Yet The Song of Hiawatha was written in 1898, long before Ravel found his voice. This very important performance is being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 later in the year, but it will be such a special occasion that it really should be experienced live.

photo :  Andy Dolman

Happy Wanderers : Three Choirs Dyson Canterbury Pilgrims

Highlight of the 2012 Three Choirs Festival was George Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims, now available online on BBC Radio 3. So for those who couldn't make it to Hereford this year, enjoy!

The Canterbury Pilgrims would seem natural territory for the Three Choirs Festival because it's primarily choral, with a vaguely religious message, yet this was its first full performance at the Festival. Dyson's music is well known, and there is a good recording of this piece conducted by Richard Hickox, (1999), so it's all the more surprising. Perhaps it's because Dyson (and Chaucer) aren't reverent. The Wife of Bath is downright salty, and little respect is shown to the ostensible authority figures

The Canterbury Pilgrims was a popular success after it was written in 1931. It's easy to hear why. It's straightforward, accessible and engaging,  It begins cheerily, with elements of mock-medieval woodwind to jolly things along, for the pilgrims are setting forth full of hope.  From the choir arises a solo.  Alan Oke's clear, bright tenor arises from the chorus, like a shining medieval hero. This pattern of choir-solo-choir repeats throughout the piece, like panels in a painting, faithful to Chaucer's characterizations. Susan Gritton sings the female parts, like the Nun and the Wife of Bath, while Simon Bailey sings the parts for bass baritone. Significantly, Dyson varies the sequence. The Squire, for example is choral, as is the Merchant. Perhaps that reflects their place in worldly society. Dyson's writing is full of droll wit. Throught the 13 sequences, the imagery of prancing horses, giving jaunty momentum.

A mysterious chill haunts the section The Clerk of Oxenford. It's a choral piece which undulates like monastic vespers, very different from the droll Monk. "Of a solemn and grave fraternity" sings Oke, describing the Haberdasher and his colleagues, as the orchestra creates steadier "footfalls", but The Merchant enters, the choir full volume, and assertive. Perhaps Dyson is referring to rivalry between Guilds and the irony of bumptious merchants going on humble pilgrimage? Dyson is witty but observant. The Sergeant of Law can have people killed, and the Doctor of Physic kills too, his medicine more superstition than science. The waving figures around the voice suggest bubbling potions and alchemy. Does Dyson identify with the Poor Parson, since his music (choral) is so beautiful? Dyson wasn't poor and had a successful career but the poetry in his setting suggests that he cared for the simple, humble man who comes last. Even the pace is less "horse" like, the sounds of the organ suggesting something more spiritual. Dyson doesn't do conventional piety, he does happy,  and to some people that's dangerous. Beneath this sunny music there's something closer to the humility of Christ than to the trappings of Church and society. In this sense, Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims is of its time, even "modern". Martyn Brabbins conducts the Philharmonia: optimistic, crisp and brisk, like some 1930's British art and design. 

"In God's name, now let us rise" the tenor sings in L'envoi. Having told their stories, the pilgrims head off. A single, muted trumpet passage. Does this suggest a beginning, an end or the idea of an unending cycle of pilgrims seeking grace?

Caractacus Rules ! Elgar broadcast

Elgar's splendid Caractacus (from the Three Choirs Festival, Worcester) is being broadcast Friday on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm. Even if Elgar oratorios are not your usual fare, this one's fun. Listen, as it's a splendidly rousing account, livelier, I think, than the Hickox recording. "Watchmen alert!" sing the massed choir. Right from the start, Elgar's Caractacus begins defiantly. "The Roman hordes have girdled in our British coast". Then Caractacus takes up the call. "Watchmen alert! The King is here!".The Romans have invaded Britain. But Druids will not be beaten ! Available for a week online, internationally

Please see this review for more.   

Original review, written at the time of the UK riots, is here, which includes historic recording from 1927.

Elgar Caractacus Worcester Three Choirs Festival

"Watchmen alert!" sing the massed choir. Right from the start, Elgar's Caractacus begins defiantly. "The Roman hordes have girdled in our British coast". Then Caractacus takes up the call. "Watchmen alert! The King is here!".The Romans have invaded Britain. Legend has it that the Britons' last stand took place at what is now known  as the Herefordshire Beacon, where the  remains of ancient fortifications can be seen atop a hill with panoramic views over the Malverns. (photo copyright Bob Embleton)

The Britons were facing a crisis situation, but in 1898 Elgar's Britain was at its peak. Basking in the certainties of their manifest destiny, Victorian Imperialists didn't register the irony that they were themselves doing to others what the Roman Imperialists did to their ancestors. In the last big chorus, Elgar's text specifically mentions "the flag of Britain (and) its triple crosses", ie the Union Flag which didn't exist until Stuart times, and British dominion "O'er peoples undiscover'd, inlands we cannot know". The truculence of this oratorio might inspire The English Defence League who clearly forget that if it hadn't been for Empire in the first place there wouldn't be immigration now. Indeed, Caractacus and his tribe were only one segment of a Britain populated from time immemorial by Celts, Picts, Angles, Saxons and other migrants to come. Hearing Caractacus, we can appreciate the pain Elgar experienced when the 1914-18 War destroyed the world he had known before.

At the Three Choirs Festival at Worcester Cathedral the audience is far too fundamentally decent to support the violence of the Far Right. This is what is great and good about the British spirit, and about Three Choirs, where it thrives so well. The locals were discussing the murder of three Muslim youths who were defending the whole community during the riots. We're all British together.

Elgar's Caractacus was very much inspired by the spirit of the landscape around him in the Malverns. The text may be violent, but the music is gloriously pastoral for the most part. The "Woodland Interlude" that begins Scene III is short, but its verdant loveliness pervades the entire work. The Druids worshipped the forces of nature. Dense woodlands were sacred to them just as Worcester Cathedral is to the modern faithful. For Elgar, nature and landscape were almost sacred too. He wrote to a friend (who appears encoded in the Enigma Variations), "the trees are singing my music- or have I sung theirs?"

"The air is sweet, the sky is calm" sings Caractacus, "all nature round is breathing balm.....O spirits of the hill surround, with waving wings this holy ground". Peter Savidge's firm intonation carries authority naturally, without being forced. His diction is so clear that it cuts through the choirs, decisively. He creates Caractacus's character with warmth and sensitivity, more faithful, perhaps to the spirit of the Druids than to High Victorian arrogance. Just listening to Savidge, you can understand why Claudius, the Roman Emperor, was so impressed by Caractacus's moral strength that he treated the Britons with respect. Savidge's O my warriors! was expansive, yet surprisngly tender. Truly "a freeborn chieftain and a people free  ...(whose) soul remains unshackled still"."  

Elgar's forte is the orchestral extension of text, so performance stands or falls on orchestra and conductor. Andrew Davis and the Philharmonia were superlative, technically brighter and sharper than the London Symphony Chorus were for Richard Hickox on their recording almost 20 years ago. Davis delineates the underlying themes so precisely that the music seems to come alive, whispering meaning much as the trees the Druids worshipped whispered meaning to them. Tight dynamics built drama into what might otherwise be fairly stolid Victorian melodrama. When this performance is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September, after the Proms. Make make sure to listen, because this is the new benchmark. Hopefully, a recording may be made available. Worcester, and the Three Choirs Festival are sacred ground to Elgar enthusiasts.

What makes the Three Choirs Festival unique, however, is the quality of the choral singing, which is the whole raison d'être behind this 300 year old tradition. Although at moments it wasn't easy to make out all the text, the fault lies not with the voices nor with the choirmaster but with the text itself. English is a language which lends itself to vowels rather than consonants, so it's easy to approximate vocally, which is why it's near universal today. There were many Caractacus figures in Gaul and in the lands of the Franks, so in theory there might be similar works in French or German, but they'd sound completely different. Caractacus and Nabucco share similar ideas, but Verdi and Elgar could not be more dissimilar. The relative imprecision of English makes the Triumphal March sympathetic. The Britons are a ragged bunch of wildmen, very different  to the sophisticated Roman Court, yet they win out since Caractacus is a level-headed fellow.

Brindley Sherratt sang Claudius with such rich resonance that he brought out the depth in the Roman's personality. The Romans may be the enemy, but Sherratt shows what a fundamentally civilized man Claudius is, for he can show mercy without compromising his power. Stephen Roberts Arch Druid/Bard was also deeply impressive.  Judith Howarth reprised Eigen, Caractacus's daughter. Her voice is in excellent form, still pure and sweet though it's been 20 years since she sang it with Richard Hickox. In  At eve to the greenwood she managed the sudden leap up the register with aplomb. Even better was her When the glow of the evening. Ben Johnson sang Orbin, the Druid whom Eigen is in love with. Johnson's very young and this is a fairly demanding part, so he did very well indeed. His bright tone is matched by good Italianate looks and an expressive face - perhaps someone to cast in operatic roles?

Listen out for the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the Three Choirs Elgar Caractacus as it's superlative. In the meantime, below is a clip from a 1928 recording by Peter Dawson, which Elgar himself would have known. It's But Rome and all her Legions.  It epitomizes the good and the bad in the whole oratorio. The text is lumpen, but listen to the gloriously Elgarian grace in the orchestration. Think of the Dream of Gerontius and read my analysis of that here. More formal review of Caractacus Elgar here.