Ca' the yowes to the knowes - folk song and art song

New from Stone Records, Part 3 in their Roger Quilter Complete Songs series,  Roger Quilter's Ca' the yowes with Mark Stone and Stephen Barlow.  Quilter's Ca' the yowes comes from a a set named the Arnold Book of Old Songs, written for Arnold Vivian, Quilter's nephew, named after Quilter's brother Arnold, killed at Gallipolli.  Tragically, Vivian, too, was killed, in 1942, shot while attempting to escape from a prisoner of war camp. Quilter's Ca' the Yowes is very different to earlier arrangements, such as the version by Maurice Jacobsen made famous by Kathleen Ferrier, and the version by Benjamin Britten, much more frequently perfomed.  Jacobsens's version is gentle, like a lullaby, while Britten's version is more austere and plaintive, as befits a song which might once have been a lament from harsh times, long ago.  Both Britten and Quilter evoke a sense of abandoned desolation, recognizing the context from which the song might have arisen. Quilter's version is even closer to lament, particularly in favouring a lower, masculine register : the piano part is understated, suggesting, perhaps, the bleak internal landscape. In the final verse, the voice swells in intensity : "I can die but canna part, My bonnie dearie".  The  song is attrributed to Isobel "Tibbie" Pagan (1741-1821)  a colourful character, who owned an alehouse where she wrote poems and sang songs for her customers.  Click HERE for a well researched piece on the evidence of Pagan's life.  It seems she was an outsider, not only because of her looks, but may have been born illegitimate. Nonetheless, the song's origins may well go much further back, to undocumented traditional ballad.  (Pagan wasn't a farmer, nor was she illiterate).  Robert Burns heard it sung by a clergyman, who may or not have got it direct.  Burns himself revised his version of the poem three times. The version in the photo at right was published in 1790.

Ca' the Yowes demonstrates one of the fundamentals of vernacular song, that the music and text are  flexible, depending on the performer or composer.  Furthermore, these songs were being collected, and notated, too, long before the "folk revival" at the turn of the 20th century.  It's just a question of luck which performer happens to be collected, and that doesn't stop good composers and performers from making the most of the material at hand.   

Please also see my piece Morbid Lullabies : ballads, folk song, art song and creative vision 

Herbert Howells Missa Sabrinensis, revealed in its true glory

At last, Herbert Howell's Missa Sabrinensis (1954) with David Hill conducting the Bach Choir, with whom David Willcocks performed the piece at the Royal Festival Hall in 1982. Willcocks commissioned the Mass for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester in 1954, when Howells himself conducted the premiere. "Such was the level of intricate detail of Howell's counterpoint", noted Wilcocks, "that he was like a medieval stonemason carving high in a cathedral, knowing that his details would be perceptible only to the composer."  This new edition by Paul Spicer and David Hill, recorded irded by Hyperion using modern sound technology, reveals those details in their full intricate glory.

In Missa Sabrinensis, Howells adapts the Mass format to celebrate the river Severn, (in Latin, "Sabrina") and by extension its role in British history, and specifically its connections to British music. The 1954 premiere of Howells’s Missa Sabrinensis was paired with Vaughan Williams' Hodie, dedicated to Howells in his maturity.  By extension, the Mass  also celebrates the Gloucestershire landscape and its personal significance for Howells and Ivor Gurney, with whom he would go walking in the surrounding countryside.

Nonetheless, Howells breaks away significantly from conventional choral tradition in the sophistication of this Mass. As Jonathan Clinch writes in his notes "the Mass can be heard as more of a choral symphony, in which he gradually builds up significant blocks of sound, using the soloists, chorus and orchestra as contrapuntal forces. This is the main reason that the work was considered so difficult, as the orchestra was not there to support the chorus in the traditional manner, but rather to build more and more lines of polyphony.  The river metaphor is appropriate as Howells writes such long lines, which are subsumed into the overall mass of sound, surging forward through the first four movements and gradually dispersing in the final two; thus, despite the complexity and number of Howells’ parts, it is the overall symphonic arch that dominates." 

The surging lines of the Kyrie with their complex melismata suggest vast horizons, such as the flow of a mighty river, or plainchant under the vaulting of a cathedral.  Soprano (Helena Dix) and tenor (Benjamin Hulett) function as an extension of the chorus. Their lines undulate, creating dense textural patterns, as if the search for faith were greater than the need for simple resolution, the final movements ending in diminuendo. Though Clinch identifies elements of Debussy and Ravel in this Kyrie, as well as Parry and Vaughan Williams, the synthesis is distinctively Howells’, closer to the spirit of Howells' English Mass, from the following year, 1955 (Please read more here )  In the Gloria, Clinch notes "ecstatic fanfares and constant dotted rhythms... creating a texture teeming with life, reinforced with bright high brass and percussion.". Again, the image of a great river, fertile and fertilizing,  while the underlying flow remains strong and unhurried.

Of the Credo, Howells wrote "this movement is begun in full cry, chorally and orchestrally, using a theme that will return at all cardinal moments.....At ‘in Spiritum Sanctum’ the theme of ‘Qui sedes’ and that of ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Agnus Dei’ are quoted. Thereafter the movement’s climax is reached through the style of opposed diatonic chords (‘et apostolicam Ecclesiam’), recapitulation (‘Confiteor’) and coda (‘Et vitam venturi saeculi’).". This Credo is a statement of hope and faith : all four soloists (Dix, Hulett, Christine Rice and Roderick Williams) join in, their voices reflected by the their counterparts in the choir.  For a moment the soloists sing with relatively little accompaniment, but on "et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas" all voices combine. Here, too, the orchestra (the BBC Concert Orchestra) comes to the fore, in glorious finale.

Howell's Sanctus begins with reference to Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms,  which he regularly cited in his teaching at the Royal College of Music. The Symphony of Psalms is a hybrid, its texts drawn from Psalms 38, 39 and 150, blending the form of ritual religious music to orchestral style, at once ancient and modern, with the unmistakable austerity that would mark Stravinsky's later style. Huge blocks of sound, hewn as if from a rockface, yet moving forward with slow but monumental pace. There are connections between the two works. Howells creates a wall of sound,  building up dense, complex textures culminating in an outburst where the organ leads voices and orchestra. textures building up in density : "Osanna in excelsis" before yet another return to pregnant stillness, from which the Benedictus emerges.  The voice parts here are spare, resembling plainchant, enhancing the purity of the text, creating luminous contrast with what has gone before. 

In the Agnus Dei, Howells reiterates themes from the Kyrie, emphasizing the cyclic symphonic structure of this Mass.  It is as if Howells were looking back while at the same venturing forward to new musical territory.  It reminds us of the tragedy that generated the Hymnus Paradisi, as if the offering up of the life of Michael Howells, so many years previously, had made the tenderness and resolution of this conclusion possible.  Howell's Missa Sabrinesis is a masterpiece, its true genius revealed in this exceptionally sensitive performance, recorded so lucidly that it defies its reputation for being difficult to perform.   This is essential listening for anyone into Howells and the true greatness of his work. 

This recording pairs the Mass with Michael, written one morning whern Howells was having breakfast with his son. It's a joyous hymn tune employing youthful voices, highlighting the simple joys of life. The brass fanfares might evoke adventure, hope, and promises that tragically, would never come to pass.

British Tone Poems vol 2 - Bliss, Fogg, Howell, and more

British Tone Poems Volume 2 from Chandos with Rumon Gamba conducting then BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.  The first volume (please seee my review HERE) focussed on some major discoveries, like Ivor Gurney's A Gloucestershire Rhapsody. There are treasures to be found in this set, too, such as Eric Fogg's Merok, Arthur Bliss' Mêlée fantastique,  Patrick Hadley's Kinder Scout and Dorothy Howell's Lamia.  

Eric Fogg (1903-1939) was a youthful prodigy, so well regarded that the British Music Society presented 25 of his works in concert when he was just seventeen. Merok (1929, published 1934) proved so popular that it was heard at the Proms several times during his lifetime.  Fogg died young, in circumstances still unclear. Merok is a town at the head of the Gieranger Fjord in Norway.  Rustling strings introduce a simple, melody, defined by oboe. This melody is taken up by flute, then violin, then cor anglais, and oboe once again, each variation flowing lyrically with graceful eddies, before a mysterious, hushed coda. Once more the oboe sings, its timbre now graver and more mysterious. The initial inspiration might have been landscape, but the effect is magical, almost hypnotic. It feels timeless, as eternal and impenetrable as the cliffs and forests looming above the fjord.  Vernon Hadley recorded Fogg's Merok in 2005, but this superlative performance by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic should put it firmly back on the map. 
Patrick Hadley (1899-1973) was a Cambridge academic, but his Kinder Scout (1923) evokes the Dark Peak,  the highest point in the Peak District, rising above the moors, which affords panoramic views as far as Manchester and Snowdonia, when visibility is good.  Long string lines stretch, setting context for a theme on cor anglais. The probing strings repeat, suggesting endless vistas. A surge wells up in the orchesta, heralded by horns. At the conclusion, a solo violin, leading the strings to soar upward.  Perhaps Hadley's Kinder Scout was influenced by Delius's A Song of the High Hills, which Hadley knew well, though, being the work of a very young man it is far less ambitious. It's moving, nonetheless, and a finely-honed miniature. 

Dorothy Howell (1898-1982)'s Lamia (1918) was premiered at the Proms by Sir Henry Wood in 1919, and repeated several times, as recently as August 2019, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.  In the poem by John Keats, Lamia is a siren, half woman, half serpent, who lives in the ocean.  She falls in love with a mortal, and he with her, but their love is doomed.  The "maritime" character of Lamia is described in swelling lines, which surge and retreat like the tides. There are erotic undertones, too, vide Tristan und Isolde. Sparkling figures - Lamia playing on the waves ? - give way to murkier undercurrents. The second section is more turbulent, underlined by dramatic brass and rumbling percussion.  Then an interlude of delicately scored reverie, winds singing above hushed strings, a brief respite before the full orchestra surges once again - very high timbres in the strings and winds, before a poignant diminuendo, where a violin plays, alone. The pace picks up, drawing together different threads - elusive figures, surging lines, stronger cross currents - before dissipating into gloom, from which the violin plaintively calls.

Fogg, Hadley and Howell were all young when they wrote their respective pieces heard here.  Hadlery went on to write other works such as the cantata The Hills (1934), but Fogg died early and Howells retired from composing.  Given this context, the inclusion of  very early work by Ralph Vaughan Williams gives perspective. Harnham Down, the second of Three Impressions for Orchestra, dates from 1904, but was later withdrawn, receiving its first recording only in 2013, through the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society's specialist label, Albion. As Lewis Foreman notes, this piece contains "the composer's fingerprints, already reecognisable : the spacing of the string orchestras in its earlier   entry, the woodwind solos and the poetuc fade-out at the end".  It's also relevant that  the score was prefaced by a stanza from Mathew Arnold  which would be referred to in An Oxford Elegy, and that the evocation of Wiltshire would find fruit in Vaughan Williams' Symphony no 9.

Also on this recording are three other short tone poems : John Foulds' April-England  Op 48 no 1 (1920, orch. 1932), Eugene Goossens By the Tarn Op 15/1 (1916)  and Frederic Hymen Cowen's Rêverie (1903), but the set concludes with Arthur Bliss Mêlée fantastique (1921, rev. 1937) . In his youth, Bliss was avant garde, responding to the creative liberation of the 1920's and to developments in European music. Please see my article Things to Come - Arthur Bliss and Futurism. The influence of Stravinsky is clear in the rhythmic daring and pounding staccato. This is music meant to be danced to, its energetic verve feels "physical", as if crying to be choreographed. Each section is brief, yet distinctive, as in a ballet, the larger tutti segments suggesting a corps of figures leaping and running. Fanfares and exuberance, contrast with swirling strings.  Low timbred brass and winds introduce darker textures, cut short by forceful single strokes on timpani.  Bliss wrote Mêlée fantastique in memory of his friend Claude Lovat Fisher, a painter and theatre designer, influenced by designers like Leon Bakst and the clean lines of modernism, who died young, hence perhaps the terse ending.  Vivid performances all round from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic.Orchestra, very much in the innovative spirit of these works from the years of change, around and after the Great War. 

Gunshots fired at Royal Albert Hall ! Assassination attempt.

Gunshots fired at the Royal Albert Hall ! The broadcast of the performance was suddenly interrupted by a scream, then silence.  What happened ? The BBC made an announcement.. "We have to apologise to listeners for the delay in the broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall. An attempt has been made to assassinate the distinguished European diplomat  Monsieur Ropa, who was attending the concert."  Fortunately, the scream, from a woman in the orchestra stalls, distracted the gunman, whose shot deflected. Mr Ropa was not killed. With chilling sangfroide, the concert resumed, as if nothing had happened.

On the eve of the First Night of the BBC Proms 2019, (read my review here) a visit to the Royal Albert Hall as it was in 1934, when people in boxes wore top hats and tuxedos, with medals, and concert goers in the stalls wore fur coats and evening dress (white tie compulsory?). In Alfred Hitchcock's The Man who Knew Too Much, (available from the British Film Institute) we get to see the RAH as it was then.  The basic structure of stage and stalls hasn't changed much - a bit less cheerful then, maybe.  The circular corridor we know now, then opened onto curved doors, which led straight onto the street, where taxis conveniently lined up, waiting. The movie's also interresting because it shows how Hitchcock and his audiences were "European-minded". Jill Lawrence (played by Edna Best) is a champion sharp shooter who competes on the European circuit. She misses out when her shot is interrupted by a chiming watch, the significance of which is revealed later. Later, her companion is shot, while they dance, but as he dies in her arms, warns her of a plot, and tells her to get her husband Bob to retrieve a note (concealed in a shaving brush in his hotel room) and deliver it to the British Consulate. Meanwhile Jill and Bob's daughter Betty is kidnapped. Though Jill looks about 25, (she was 35), the girl looks 14! (the actress was 17).  So Bob doesn't dare inform the British authorities, either, though the Foreign Office knows what's going on.

Bob and his friend manage to penetrate the den where the assassins hide out, disguised as the Temple of a secret order of initiates who worship the sun.  A send up of the esoteriuc, spiritiaulist cults, so popular from Victorian times.  It's headed by a strange eccentric Englishwoman Nurse Agnes,  and an even stranger man called Abbott, played by Peter Lorre, newly escaped from the Nazis.  He didn't speak English at the time, so delivers his lines phonetically, which adds to the surreal situation. Bob and his friend join in the hymns, singing out of tune. The plotters aren't fooled and hold them captive.  Bob overhears Abbott telling Ramon, the assassin,  to fire when the performance reaches a specific climax. Luckily, there's a scuffle, and Bob's friend gets away to warn Betty, who heads to the Royal Albert Hall.  The music is pretty horrible, a pastiche which vaguely resembles RVW's A Sea Symphony but is suitably loud enough to hide the sound of gunshots.  Jill scans the auditorium, and, being a sharp shooter, spots the gun and screams, throwing the gunman off his target.  Just as, implausibly, Abbott's watch had thrown her off target in Switzerland, so Ramon won the tournament.  Jill follows Ramon to the hideout, followed by the police, who break in and shoot Abbott, when yet again, his watch beeps at an inopportune moment.

Because the plot centres around the device of using loud concert repertoire to conceal an assassination, Hitchcock needed a suitable piece of music which would not have been familiar to real concert goers, to keep them in suspense.  Arthur Benjamin was commissioned to write the piece which he named the Storm Clouds Cantata. It's a pastiche of the piece in the film, complete with high dramatic mezzo soprano and chorus. Since it runs less than 9 minutes, and requires fairly big forces, it's not the easiest piece to programme, except as a novelty.  In the early years of the 20th century, cinema was still a "new" genre, which many recognized as a potentially new form for "serious" art combining visuals, music and storytelling.  Even in the silent era, music was specially composed to be performed live while screening. (Please see my piece on Armas Järnefelt : Song of the Scarlet Flower 1919 HERE and on René Clair, Hanns Eisler, Eisenstein and many more.  Because the genre was so new, there was a learning curve, figuring out different ways to blend music with visuals.  By the very nature of film, narrative tends to take precedence, so music is usually employed, as in theatre, as incidental to drama. In rare cases, notably the works of Hanns Eisler, the music itself is integral to the development of concept.  That's why I have so much respect for Arthur Bliss's music for Alexander Korda's Things to Come.  Please read more here.  Bliss knew the horrors of war first hand and was very much taken by the idea that war might be eradicated. His music wasn't incidental, but integral to the film, where long sequences are shot using state of the art cinematographic techniques, which forward the narrative in the expressionist terms which give the film so much of its power. 

Things to Come - Arthur Bliss and Futurism

What will the next hundred years bring to mankind ?  Time to revisit the British cinema classic Things to Come, based on H G Wells' story The Shape of Things to Come which was a sensation in its time (1936) produced by Alexander Korda, directed by William Cameron Menzies, with music by Arthur Bliss.

In Everytown, which resembles Central London, it's Christmas. Crowds are rushing round fancy shops lit with new-fangled neon lights.  In the sound track, a choir sings the carol "God rest you Merry Gentleman" on the phrase, "May nothing you dismay", the brass fanfares scream and the pace slows to rigid march.  Newspaper headlines warn of war. At a family party, kids play with new toys while their elders discuss progress. "If we don't end war", says young Mr Cabal (Raymond Massey), "war will end us". "War stimulates progress" says his optimistic guest.  Suddenly, bells are heard, ringing.  Not for Christmas, though. Sirens sound, and gunfire. Everytown (and the Battleship Dinosaur) is being bombed.  The country mobilizes for war.  Diagonal shots, people running in different directions, rows of soldiers superimposed on one another.  Nothing new for those used to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927 - please read more here) and other futurist films, German, Russian, French and Italian.  Smoke, explosions, bombs, tanks, more aeroplanes together than could fly safely in formation, and poison gas. For Brits, who came to art film later, this must have been thrilling stuff.  Wonderfully discordant music - not what you'd associate with Arthur Bliss. Here's he's wildly uncompromising.  He had, after all, seen war up close. Bliss made a Suite based on the soundtrack, (see below) which premiered before the film was released. Clearly, he knew he was on to something good.

And so the war continues, (to 1970!) the city in ruins, the people reduced to primitive squalor. A  plague "like the Black Death of the Middle Ages" stalks the land. Fearing infection, the healthy turn on the sick.  A man has a car,  but no petrol. It's pulled by horses. Yet even that technology makes him a Chief  (Ralph Richardson) .  Suddenly, a machine lands, a new kind of aeroplane, manned by a man in a black futuristic costume. It's Mr Cabal. He's come from "Wings Over the World". Decades of war have destroyed civilization but WOTW,  "the Brotherhood of Efficiency, the Freemasonry of Science", technocrats pledged to save the world, based in Basra.  Prophetic yet ironic, since strategic control over oil supplies makes much machine-based technology possible. Think of what's happened to modern Iraq.  "We don't approve of independent sovereign states" says Cabal, though his utopia controls the sky (it builds aeroplanes) and seas.  The Chief plays along, helping Cabal, thinking machines will help him with the war, "The Peace of the Strong Arm.... we are warriors, not mechanics ! we have been trained not to think, but to die". Eventually, Cabal gets word to his people and they invade, using a gas that puts people to sleep without killing them, though the Chief drops dead. Thus the Brave New World of Progress, enforced by benevolent  technocrats.More long sequences of machines, production lines, the building of vast machines. Though it's not on the level of Metropolis, this is one of the best sequences in the film, and Bliss's music rises to the occasion - pounding staccato, wailing winds, ferocious brass. Not quite on the level of, say, Antheil's Ballet mécanique or Mosolov's The Iron Foundry or practically anything Varèse, but still....  Had Bliss done more of the same, one wonders where he could have gone. This would have served him well in the brave new world of the Festival of Britain and 1950's progress.

A hundred years after that fateful Christmas, the people of the world live in idealized luxury, under the ground.  Cabal's great-grandson Oswald now heads the Wings Over the World. In this new art deco Paradise there are plans to explore the Moon, using a "Space Gun" (No rockets on the horizon in 1936)  But some things don't change. "What is the point of progress? " cries a new Chief, the demagogue Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke),  his image emblazoned on gigantic screens, preaching to his followers in a chilling foretaste of modern media maipulation, "We demand a halt - the object of life is "happy living" ! ... Let this be the last day of the scientific age - Destroy it ! NOW!"  Whipped up by fear and strange rhetoric,  the crowd roars in assent. Inflamed, they move upon the Space Gun to destroy it and what it stands for, armed with bars of metal, bent on violence.  As the demagogue screams, the mobs march, swarming over the vast machine, like a horde of maddened hornets.  "Beware of the concussion"!" warns Cabal as the Space Gun is fired, to no avail. The capsule heads off towards the moon, in a beam of light. The will to explore cannot be extinguished, "For Man, no rest, no ending...", says Cabal, "til all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him are conquered. For if we are no more than little animals, we must snatch each scrap of happiness .... it is all, or nothing ! which shall it be?"As the screen fades, an unseen choir echoes his words "Which shall it be!" in ringing affirmation.

Please also see my Gunshots fired at the Royal Albert Hall which shows how different Bliss's achievemnt was from "ordinary" music written for film.  In Things to Come, Bliss's music was part of the concept : it was more than music created to provide a soundtrack

Howells : An English Mass, Cello Concerto, Stephen Cleobury

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge has played a role in the evolution of British music,  This recording honours this heritage and Stephen Cleobury's contribution in particular by focusing on Herbert Howells, who transformed the British liturgical repertoire in the 20th century.

Paul Spicer, who knew Howells well and has championed his music over the years, writes "cathedral music in the Anglican tradition was still haltingly recovering from the doldrums of the Victorian period when standards of performance were often lamentable". As an organist in Gloucester, Howells understood that tradition, but studied at the Royal College of Music in London with mentors like Charles Stanford and Hubert Parry, and imbibed the revival of interest in Tudor and earlier liturgical music. Howells often cited Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis as an influence. "All through my life", he said, "I’ve had this strange feeling that I belonged somehow to the Tudor period not only musically but in every way".

When Howells was appointed organist at St. John's, Cambridge, he gained access to the resources the university could provide, stimulating an outpouring of new work.  The Te Deum from 1944, written for King's College, would eventually become part of the Collegium Regale, now known affectionately as "Coll. Reg." Here, it provides a jubilant prelude to Howells' An English Mass, with the Magnificat (in an orchestration by John Rutter) providing a glorious postlude.

This framing enhances the originality of Howells' An English Mass.  Long contrapuntual lines give the Kyrie a brooding, probing quality. The voices are subdued : the quiet ending feels deliberately ambiguous.  "I believe in One God" sings the soloist, unaccompanied, but how far is this a cry of confidence ? The answer may or may not lie in the Sanctus, defined by an assertive, almost exotic  woodwind figure. The instrumentation (flute, oboe, timpani, harp, organ and strings) designed for performance in a small place, adds to a feeling of tense confinement, so the long vocal lines offer a glimmer of hope.  This is reinforced in the Benedictus, with two soloists - wonderfully plangent, as if they belonged in earlier centuries where faith went unquestioned. They are supported by a semichorus, so well parted that the voices seem to shimmer. The final note, in unison, is held for several bars, enhancing the tiny figure for oboe at the end. With the Agnus Dei, a mood of supplication returns : O Lamb of God, with its connotations of sacrifice.  A harp joins the strings, a hint that heaven may be in sight.  "While still highly dissonant", writes Spicer, the Gloria, is exuberant, particularly effective after the restraint that went before.  Now the organ adds powerful affirmation. The final section is distinctive, the tenor reiterating the firmness in the Credo, the choir intoning"Amen". 

If the English Mass highlights Howells's approach to faith, his Cello Concerto might reflect the tragedy that shaped his outlook, from which came the Hymnus Paradisi.  The first movement, completed  in 1937, is monumental, almost twice as long as the other two movements. Coincidentally, the cellist, Guy Johnston,was once a King's chorister.  Christopher Seaman conducts the Britten Sinfonia. "While the movement could be considered a theme and (continuous) variations", writes Spicer, "there are also two large arches to the form where he builds on each successive variation to create a major climax, which then gradually dies away to a central passage of relative calm and stillness; the whole arch-process is then repeated again, this time with greater intensity as he compresses the early variations". The cello enhances Howell's extended lines, so they seem like long-held breaths.  The cello functions like a giant lute, bowed as well as plucked, intensifying the sense of timelessness and melancholy. The concerto wasn't fully completed by Howells. Spicer describes the process in which the piece was prepared for performance. For this reason alone, this recording is significant, since Howells considered the Threnody among his finest, most personal works. It received its premiere in 2016 at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester. The second movement is remarkable,combing strong, dark motifs against moments of string refinement , the cello 's long, resonant lines rising plaintively above.   The finale is more angular and energetic, with "a childlike sense of fun".  "Overall, the restless tension and richness of aesthetic seem to match Howells the man so well" says Spicer, who should know better than most,  "transforming the concerto into a soliloquy on grief and the associated mixed emotions".

This recording is completed by Howells' Paean, Master Tallis's Testament and Three Rhapsodies op 17 with Stephen Cleobury on the King's College organ. Altogether a significant contribution to the Herbert Howells legacy.

Longing for Paradise : Albrecht Mayer, Strauss Oboe Concerto

"Longing for Paradise", oboe concertos by Richard Strauss, Elgar, Ravel and Goosens with Albrecht Mayer, and Jakub Hrůša conducting the Bamberger Symphoniker, new from Deutsche Grammophon.  "How does an emotional, sensitive and romantic composer react when faced with the reality of war and a destroyed homeland"?  writes Mayer, describing the choices on this eclectic programme - Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, Elgar's Soliliquy for oboe and orchestra, Eugene Goossens Concerto in One Movement and Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin.  An intelligently planned programme, executed extremely well, makes this disc a top recommendation.  It soothes my soul and stretches my mind !

Richard Strauss's Concerto for Oboe and small orchestra in D major (AV 144), receives an outstanding performance, Mayer navigating the technical complexities with finesse. The Allegro moderato begins with a tour de force section of 57 bars which focus attention on the oboe. Gradually, orchestral textures build up around the oboe.  If Metamorphosen was written in response to the destruction of war, the Oboe Concerto might represent a reflection on the past and future, the strings in Metamorphosen replaced by the deeper sounds of winds, the oboe supported by flutes, cor anglais, clarinets and bassoons.  The serenity of Mayer's playing has purpose, evoking the balance of an idealised past.  As he notes these beauties are "perhaps an intimation of Paradise". There are no hints of Strauss's typically ambivalent waltzes, no ironic fractures. Instead interpretation requires "maximum effortlessness. Perhaps Strauss himself soared in something like the pure riches oif its euphony when he wrote it". The Andante is exqusite, enhanced by a sense of melancholy, the oboe singing gracefully.  The Vivace-Allegro is lively. With extended solo passages the oboe leads the orchestra in full flow towards the confident conclusion.

Edward Elgar's Soliloquy is also a late work, written in 1930 for oboe and piano for Léon Goossens, though only the second movement was completed.  The arrangement for oboe and small orchestra heard here was made in 1967 by Gordon Jacobs. The oboe line stretches expansively, the orchestra responding with hushed tones, before fading elusively away.  Also originally conceived for oboe and piano, is Eugene Goossens's Concerto in One Movement for oboe and orchestra  (op 45, 1927).  The  piece traverses different styles - pastoral, energetic, and exotic - the oboe part redolent of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun or even The Firebird, though with a touch of wry humour.  

Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, is as much an hommage to French style as a a series of memorials to Ravel's friends who died in the 1914-1918 war.  A vivacious Prélude, with the oboe as lithe and athletic as a creature of the forest. The dance origins of the Forlane are sprightly,  every "step" in the music vivid.  The more formal Minuet and the Rigaudon are vigorous, but beneath this lies sorrow,  Oboe and strings interact, two voices entwining like partners in a dance, an allusion that connects the living and the dead.

Nefoedd (Heaven) - Welsh Art Songs from Tŷ Cerdd

Nefoedd (Heaven) - a collection of Welsh songs with Sioned Terry and Brian Ellsbury from Tŷ Cerdd.  Twentieth century Welsh song is undergoing a surge of interest, which should come as no suprise, after Tŷ Cerdd's groundbreaking Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a  Lost Icon, (please read more here). Those new to the repertoire will also find much to delight in. 

The first songs in this collection form a miniature cycle.  Y Gog Lwdlas (The Grey Cuckoo) is a traditional Welsh text arranged by Mervyn Roberts (1906-1990), setting the context for My Welsh Home by W S Gwynn Williams (1896-1978), a ballad of a hill farm, the rustic mood extended by Williams's I Hear a Shepherd's Pibgorn, this time set as a lively jig. This set is held together by another traditional song Y Deryn Du (The Black Bird) in a particularly lovely arrangement by Dilys Elwyn-Edwards (1918-2012). Two songs in Welsh, evoking the purity of unspoiled Nature, glorying in the beauty of this unique language, framing two songs in English. Germans would use the term "Sensucht" : I don't know what the Welsh equivalent might be, but these songs capture that sense of of idealized longing, more elevated than mere nostalgia.

Three songs by Joseph Parry (1841-1903) show how Welsh song could be adapted to mainstream European tradition.  Parry started life as a coal miner, emigrated to America, and ended up Professor of Music at Aberystwyth and Cardiff.  He wrote Blodwen, the first opera in Welsh.  These songs,Gwraig Y Morwr (The Sailor’s Wife), Lady Maelor’s Aria - The Valiant Sir Howell, and My Wife, are ballads, similar to the parlour songs of Victorian times, and would have been enjoyed by Welsh speaking performers and audiences.  Ivor Novello (1893-1951)  studied at Oxford, but found fame and fortune in music theatre and popular song.  His The Land of Might-Have-Been (1924) may be included here because it bears a decided resemblance to Morfydd Owen's The Land of Hush-a-Bye (which can be heard on the Tŷ Cerdd recording Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a  Lost Icon). Owen and Novello had several London connections in common, so it is possible that Novello had at some stage heard Owen's song, which, to my mind at least, is far stronger.  Thomas Osborne Roberts (1879-1948) represents yet another strand in Welsh tradition.  An organist, and participant at Eisteddfordau,  through his first wife, an opera singer, he moved in wide circles, and was respected by Vaughan Williams and Bantock.  He wrote hymns like Y Nefoedd (The Heavens) and songs like Min y Mor (By the Sea) where the piano part ripples and the voice part rolls like gentle waves.  

 
The highlights of this collection are the four songs by Meirion Williams (1901-1976) which prove  that Welsh song can reach the heights of sophisticated art song. In Pan Ddaw'r Nos (When the Night Comes), the voice and piano parts interact with great delicacy, creating a languidly sensual nocturne, despite the religious undertones of the poem. Y Blodau ger y Drws (The blossoms by my door) lilts sensuously and Yr Hwyr (The Evening) is restrained, the piano underlining the vocal line to great effect.  In Gwynfdd (Paradise) to a poem Crwys by William Williams (1875-1968) , the voice part is almost ecstatic, caressing the distinctive sounds of the Welsh language. The "blessed realm of Paradise", lies not in far off lands, but "within my heart for e'er to keep, like roses fair before mine eyes". 

Stile Antico In a Strange Land - Elizabethan composers in exile

"In a Strange Land" - Elizabethan Composers in Exile, new from Stile Antico on Harmonia Mundi, featuring the works of English composers forced into exile during the Reformation. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill."  These verses, from Psalm 137, provide the text for William Byrd's Quomodo cantabimus, and serve as a reninder that the composers featured, John Dowland, William Byrd,  Peter Philips, Robert White and Richard Dering, had to adapt to situations where the connection between State and Church put them in a position where their faith could be challenged.

This recording begins with the John Dowland ayre for lute Flow my tears (1596),presented here by Stile Antico in a consort arrangement, the descending lacrimae motif recreated by the voices.  Dowland, who became a Catholic while in Paris in his late teens, believed that his religion stood in the way of  success at the Elizabethan Court, but was later employed by King James I. William Byrd, on the other hand, was favoured by Queen Elizabeth I, though he was recusant and had to tread carefully. His Cantiones sacrae of 1589, from which is taken Tristitia et anxietas, where semi-tonal inflections add richness and depth.  Even more resplendent is Byrd's eight-part motet Quomodo cantabimus. As Matthew O'Donovan writes "that three of its eight voice parts (form) an ingenious canon by inversion was doubtless intended to reassure the outside world that music was alive and well amongst England’s persecuted Catholics", given that the English exiles had neither forgotten their faith nor their homeland.  The esnsemble blends beautifully, so the harmonies seem to glow.  Based on the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the Old Testament, the Lamentation of Robert White (1543-1574), could also allude to faith in times of turmoil.  In this version, for five voices, the polyphonic textures evoke the sacred music of the Catholic Church.  On the document which serves as source , there is a Latin inscription which reads "Wine and music make the heart glad".  This could refer to the musical merits of the piece, but also act as cover for its coded religious meaning.

Richard Dering (1580-1630) was able to return to England in the last years of his life as organist to Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I.  His Factum et silentium is a dramatic motet with strongly defined rhythms. An ecstatic  performance responding to the text "A voice was heard, a thousand upon a thousand fold....Alleluia !".  Peter Philips (1560/1-1628) spent most of his life in the Catholic Low Countries.  His Gaude Maria virgo employs counterpoint, while in his Regina caeli laetare  the voices are used in cadence, reflecting the influence of Gabrieli or Monteverdi.   Stile antico  is of course greatly respected for Renaissance and early baroque, but also ventures into modern territory. Huw Watkins’s The Phoenix and the Turtle (2014) was commissioned by Nicholas and Judith Goodison for Stile Antico.  Shakespeare's poem describes the funerals of two birds : the dove symbolizing fidelity, the phoenix  idealism that cannot be destroyed by fire.  Could it be interpreted as a cryptic message ? Watkins's setting pits vigorous rhythms against slower passages, and ends in unison.

Internal Landscapes : Bax, Vaughan Williams - Brabbins, BBCSO

Martyn Brabbins conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. at the Barbican in Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 4 and Arnold Bax November Woods   A good combination which had the potential to yield  interesting insights in musical terms. So why does BBC Radio 3 management need to market this as "Remembering World War I" ? Neither piece has  anything to do with war.  Alas, BBC R3 seems hell bent on prioritizing non-musical agendas over music, to meet non-musical targets. Long term, this policy of dumbing down destroys real musical understanding. Better to treat audiences as adults who aren't afraid to think or listen.

Both Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony and Bax's November Woods are explorations of ideas that aren't so easy to put in prose : "internal landscapes" so to speak, that find expression in sounds and musical form.  November Woods (1917) isn't about forests per se but forests as metaphors for emotion    It's worth quoting Bax's (non-symphonic) poem Amersham, as the programme book does :

Storm, a mad painter's brush, swept sky and land
with burning signs of beauty and despair
And once rain scourged through shrivelling wood and brake,
And in our hearts tears stung, and the old ache
Was more than any God would have us bear. 

Here the musical forces were in the fore, the orchestra voicing whatever inner storm Bax might have sought to address. The introduction seems to surge and strain, driven by fast-flowing strings, lit by flashes of woodwinds and harp, darkened by violas, celli, oboe and bassoons.  A theme energes, first from cor anglais, then more boldly by horn and then oboe and cello : a duality which could suggest many things, but is part of the very conception. Themes cool and warm, creating flux, but there's no easy resolution. The coda was hushed, mysterious, open-ended.  November Woods is much more "modern" than you'd expect, connecting in this sense to other works of the period.

photo : Jules Barbieri

Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 4 in F minor (1931-4) received an astonishing performance from Brabbins and the BBCSO. In the Barbican Hall, the impact was spectacular. Though BBC broadcasts are usually good, on air this one was lifeless, giving no sense of occasion.  "I don't like the work itself much",  RVW told Sir Henry Wood, but it is undoubtedly a very fine piece. Good music "exists" by its own creative volition : it's not manufactured to preconceived specifications like a consumer product.  As the composer was later to write "I do think it beautiful...because we know that beauty can come from unbeautiful things".  The introduction on this occasion exploded with extreme but controlled force. Although this fanfare is shocking, it does connect to other aspects of the composer’s work.  At times I was reminded of the figure in the Antiphon in Five Mystical Songs which is relevant, since "The Church with psalms must shout....My God and King ". Vaughan Williams, who knew the Bible and Messianic traditions, understood the concept of forces so powerful that they cannot be constrained.  Pounding ostinato, trumpets (with Biblical signifigance) ablaze, trombones and tuba adding depth.  The theme isn't meant to be soothing. It could reflect the "terrible beauty" from the Book of Job Ch 37, 17-22, though there is nothing religious about this symphony. The references merely serve to indicate that a cataclysm of some sort is being unleashed : no other connotations.

More brass in the second movement, marked andante moderato, but this time more restrained, the strings of the BBCSO murmuring en masse, from which the woodwind line rose, moving ever upwards.  A sense of unease : tense pizzicato creating a fragile though regular beat. The flute melody, exquisitely played, had a poignant quality: painfully alone but unbowed.  Wildness returned with the third movement, brass pounding, trombones creating long zig-zag lines. For a moment the tuba leads a trio with grunting bassoons. The term "scherzo" means "joke" but the humour here is darkly ironic. This colours the sprightly theme which follows : it's not escapist.  With the figure I called "My God and King" the overwhelming thrust of the first movement returns, angular dissonances flying in all directions, clod-hopping ostinato suggesting grotesque horror. Again, no resolution, no easy answers. Perhaps we can guess why RVW dedicated it to Bax.

The contrast with the intensity and sheer musical quality of Vaughan Williams's symphony put Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Last Man Standing into place.  This is a big work, running as long as the symphony, and was served up with lighting effects, props and a shower of objects which might be poppies, and co-ordinated dresses for composer and text writer.  The piece was specially commissioned to mark the 1914-1918 war.  But there is a lot more to war than pretty images.  Much of the problem lies in the text, 15 verses on aspects of life in the trenches, by Tamsin Collison.  Frances-Coad's setting illustrates well but is more sound effects than music.  Entertaining enough, and certainly not mentally or emotionally challenging. But war is not entertainment. and never should be trivialized.  We know, or should by now know, what it was like in the trenches, but no sign here of any reflection or personal insight.  The baritone soloist, Marcus Farnsworth, did his best, as did the orchestra, but this piece bore all the signs of music-made-to-order.  Millions died and suffered in the Great War, which re-shaped the whole world.  To what avail ? 

Stanford Mass Via Victrix premiere, Partington, BBC NOW.

Charles Villiers Stanford's Mass Via Victrix, resurrected and edited by Jeremy Dibble, with Adrian Partington conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  This world premiere will get a lot of attention since Stanford has become fashionable in recent years, so it's sure to be well received.   Completed in December 1919, it is  inscribed with the Latin translation of a line from Psalm 66, "Transiverunt per ignem et aquam et eduxsisti in refrigerium",  which means "We went through fire and through water; But You brought us out to rich fulfillment.". Since Stanford and his contemporaries knew their Bible well, it is worth reading the psalm in full. (link here)  because the psalm is not a hymn of mourning but a song of triumph.  

Even more pointedly, the psalm is about power  that cannot be questioned.  "How awesome are Your works! Through the greatness of Your power. Your enemies shall submit themselves to You" And "He rules by His power forever; His eyes observe the nations;Do not let the rebellious exalt themselves".  Which is fair enough as God is omnipotent, but soldiers killed in battle, no matter how heroic they were, are men, not gods : they cannot be conflated in the same terms.  So savage was the 1914-1918 war that everyone had some connection to those who were killed, maimed or bereaved, and by 1919 it would have become obvious that the configuration of Europe was irretrievably changed. Many had been mourning for years. 

It is not enough to take this Mass at face value. The title is explicit "Via Victrix" - the "Way of the Victor".  This is no personal expression, but a public statement  taking pride in the idea that Might is Right.  Perhaps that's why the piece didn't fit the mood of those post-war years, when millions were numb with grief,  with no taste for the bullying belligerence that led to war in the first place.

Stanford's Mass Via Victrix is a Mass, more or less following the format established long before the Reformation.  Religion does not come into it as a means of musical expression : many composers who have written Requiems weren't devout and no doubt a good few were only Christian by social convention.  Stanford would certainly have known  Brahms German Requiem.  Because Msses operate in sequence they provide internal structure and colour.  Introits are processionals,  Dies Iraes are turbulent, Sanctus's are reflective, Pie Jesu's are plaintive.  And the ultimate goal is always the same : redemption.  Thus variations are built into any Mass, obeying the shifting liturgical balance.  Stanford follows the form faithfully, alternating outbursts of volume with moments of restraint.  Each section is elaborately orchestrated, maximizing impact and drama,  making the piece impressive. Ultimately, though, a Requiem recognizes that man is mortal, and that God alone brings victory over death.  Humility is of the essence !  Not that that has hindered some much loved Requiems, full of ego and show.  I don't think we should assume either way that bluster and piety are incompatible.  Stanford must have been very pleased with himself.  The assertive certainities of this Mass are comforting to live with in our modern world, which seems to be growing infinitely more divisve and extreme.  Perhaps the popular mood has shifted again, as it did in the years after 1918, and the time has come for a Mass Via Victrix, as long as you are on the right side.  As music, Stanford's Mass Via Victrix is rousing stuff,  easy to march along with, and should prove popular, triumphalist or not, though one should caution against calling it a major masterpiece.  Certainly, a performance executed with gusto, from Partington, BBC NOW and soloists Kiandra Howarth, Jess Dandy, Ruairi Bowen and Gareth Brynmor John. 



Frederick Septimus Kelly's Elegy for Strings, In Memoriam Rupert Brooke provided an interesting counterpoint : achingly poignant and sincere, the smaller ensemble and tight orchestration allowing  intimacy.   Although Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin may have been included in this programme to extend the war memorial aspect to France, the piece is more than a set oif portraits of departed friends.  It is every bit as much a homage to French style, and to the vigour of the dance forms defining it.  The programme began with Ernest Farrar's Rhapsody No 1 "The Open Road" , Op 9 (1908). Ostensibly the connection is that Farrar, who was killed in the Somme after having survived Gallipolli, was a student of Stanford, but so was practically everyone else. Farrar's piece is very original,  imbued with a free-wheeling spirit.Vaguely  Scottish cadences suggest wide open spaces,  away from constrained civilization.  What might Farrar have gone on to had he lived ? Would he, like Ralph Vaughan Williams, have continued his musical adventures exposed to the brave new world of Ravel et al ?

Superb Hubert Parry Symphony no 4 Rumon Gamba Chandos

From Chandos, Sir Hubert Parry's Symphony no 4 in E minor ,with Prosperine and movements from Suite Moderne. This performance, with Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, is outstandingly vivid, eclipsing Matthias Bamert's 1989  performance, also for Chandos, which remains the only other readily available recording of this symphony.  But what also makes it special is that it is Parry's original version, based on the score conducted by Hans Richter, Parry's great friend, on 1st July 1889.  This performance is so convincing that it makes a case for the original, which critics found too difficult to follow after the relatively sunny Third Symphony.  In 1909, Parry revised the piece extensively, retaining ideas from the first, second and last movements, composing much new material and replacing the original Scherzo in A minor with a completely new movement  in in G major.  We can only hope that Chandos will commission a recording of the 1909 version from Gamba in the future, to enhance the comparison.  Gamba isn't a conductor who courts celebrity, but he's an excellent musician who gets results that deserve celebrity status.

From the first bars, Gamba's attack is forceful, emphasizing the strength of the Doric theme.  The  passage leads to nine other sections, which move swiftly ranging from animato to sweeping largamente, Gamba revealing the tight structure behind the restlessness and constant change in the long development. The brief intermezzo serves as a transition to the third movement marked Lento expressivo with a short interlude between the first and second sections.  Jeremy Dibble, who edited this version, describes its "lyrical pathos" thus : "The diatonic richness of the slow movement's first idea is classic Parry in its treatment of dissonance and sonorous string texture, and the falling sequences and double suspensions of its closing bars seem palpably prophetic of Elgar." (who, incidentally was in the audience for the premiere). "And while the light hearted second subject attempts to assert itself, it is the noble generosity and poetry of the first idea that prevails.". Parry may have amended the Scherzo but its freshness and dance themes led him to re-arrange it for piano duet.   The Finale is dramatic, working out the tension between dance and march, including  "an unexpected and arresting shift to D major at the centre".  The strong theme of the first movement returns in the Finale but the movement concludes with confident assurance. Parry would attach titles to the later revision to symbolize stages in search of self discovery.  His summary was to be "Finding the Way".

Hearing Parry's Symphony no 4 (1889) with three movements from his Suite Moderne (1886)  highlights the composer's progressive ideas.  Initially concieved in symphonic form, Parry uses an Idyll, a moderato in C major in place of a more conventional Scherzo. Yet Scherzo it is, a lively jest, hunting horns and dance figures alluding to Arcadia, followed by an even gentler Romanza as slow movement.  There's something stylishly "modern" (ie late Victorian) in its expansive self-assurance. Significantly, Parry was supportive of Elgar from a very early stage. These two movements were placed between a Ballade (not included here)  and a Rhapsody with three sections in seven and a half minutes, reminiscent of the long development in the first movement of Symphony no 4.  This complements Parry's only ballet Proserpine (1912) for orchestra and chorus, based loosely on a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley where maidens gather flowers in a sunlit meadow, unaware that Proserpine will soon be kidnapped and forced into marriage by Pluto, doomed to spend half the year in darkness underground. So much for Arcadian innocence !

Please see my other posts on Hubert Parry and on British music. Please join my Hubert Parry page on FB

SOMM Remembrance - Choral music by Ireland Holst Parry Elgar

From SOMM, In remembrance, marking the end of the 1914-1918 war, choral music with organ accompaniment by Ireland, Holst, Parry, Elgar, Fauré and Venables  with the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, conducted by William Vann. In pride of place, Sir C Hubert Parry's Jerusalem, so deeply embedded in the British national consciousness that it has taken on new life as an icon of popular culture, adopted and adapted to many different situations. The text, by William Blake, is visionary, but its meaning is subtle "And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?". For Blake, writing in the Industrial Revolution, the answer was "not yet". "I shall not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem in Englsnd's green & pleasant land".  The piece was commissioned by an organization set up in 1915 to raise morale.   The version on this reciording is Parry's original, premiered at Queen's Hall in March 1916, with 300 volunteer singers accompanied by organ, (here played by Hugh Rowlands), not the more famous orchestration made by Sir Edward Elgar in 1922.  The emphasis in this version is on the unison choir, and the balance of male and female voices, an important consideration given that Parry was soon disillusioned by the growing jingoism of the Fight for Right movement and pointedly withdrew his support.  By then the song had been taken up by the Women's Suffrage movement, of which Maude Parry was a member. Parry was delighted, "I wish indeed that it might become Women Voter's Hymn", he wrote, "......and having the vote ought to diffuse a good deal of joy, too."


This Jerusalem is thus positioned between the words from the Bible, and a text associated with the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war.   In Greater Love Hath No Man, Johnn Ireland sets the crucial phrase for solo baritone (Gareth Brynmor John), "that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness". Ireland was writing in 1912, before the onset of war, when the sacrifice meant Christian sacrifice. Jesus died for all men (and women) regardless of place and time.  For the Fallen, reflects the way the message adapted after the impact of war.  The piece was written in 1971 by Dougas Guest (born 1916).  Though much of Laurence Binyon's original is belligerent, Guest, who served in the Second World War, sets only one verse, placing emphasis on the sombre, humbling line the words "We shall we remember them".

Sir Edward Elgar's setting of They are at Rest, to a text by John Henry Newman, is an elegy marking the ninth anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria, while O Valiant Hearts by Charles Harris, a friend of Elgar, is a postwar reflection on loss. I Vow to thee, My country is Gustav Holst's adaptation of Jupiter in The Planets as the anthem. Its serenity links earthly death with concepts of eternal life, on another plane.  Holst's Ode to Death is heard here transcribed for choir and organ (James Orford), as is Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor arranged by Iain Farrington.   Ian Venables's Requiem Aeternum  (2017) completes the set, a timely reminder that death is a part of the cycle of life.
Please also see my review of Earth & Sky - choral works by Ralph Vaughan Willaims, also conducted by William Vann, for Albion Records.

Elgar The Hills of Dreamland - orchestral songs

The Hills of Dreamland - Edward Elgar orchestral songs, new from Somm Recordings, sponsored by the Elgar Society.  Elgar's genius for oratorio, and large scale works for orchestra and voice somewhat eclipse his ventures in art song, apart from the masterpiece Sea Pictures, and the more recently acclaimed Fringes of the Fleet. Those who have treasured  SOMM's first collection of Elgar songs for voice  (with Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Christopher Maltmann, Neal Mackie and Malcolm Martineau) will seek this out, for they make good companion pieces. In any case, there are some real treasures here, such as  Elgar's Song Cycle op 59 which deserves greater appreciation. Heartfelt thanks to SOMM Recordings for bringing this back into the repertoire.

The first disc in this 2 CD set (offered at the price of one) features Elgar's Song Cycle op 59 and his Two Songs op 60 plus Pleading, The King's Way, Follow the Colours and incidental music to Grania and Dairmid.  The soloists are Kathryn Rudge and Henk Neven, with Barry Wordsworth conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra.  Elgar's Song Cycle op 59 was initially planned as a set of songs to texts by Gilbert Parker, a Canadian born novelist who was later to be knighted for services to Britain during the 1914-18 war.  "O soft was the song",  "Was it some golden star ?" and "Twilight"  are tender, and almost elegaic. They were written for a concert in memorial of A J Jaeger, Elgar's friend, whom he immortalized in the Enigma Variations.  Henk Neven's burnished timbre gives them personal, intimate warmth.  The cycle develops to a high point with "The Wind of Dawn", initally written in 1888 to a poem by Alice, before she and Elgar were married. In its original form it was a song for voice and piano.  In the bolder orchestration the strings surge, suggesting heaving passion, since the text is daringly erotic, for the era. The full orchestra rises to expansive crescendo, the mezzo (Kathryn Rudge) soaring above. It is a song worthy of Sea Pictures, and indeed, the imagery includes references to "the sea stream'd red from the kiss of his brow". A pity it was created after Sea Pictures had made its mark.  It would be interesting to speculate why Elgar concluded this cycle - for it is a cycle - with "The Pipes of Pan". the words are by Adrian Ross who wrote hits for musical theatre, though this text refers to Greek mythology.  But Pan is the god of fertlity and robust disorder,  a shepherd whom polite society cannot contain. Pan is a musician, too,who plays his pipes and enchants those who pay attention.  This song therefore connects to "The Wind at Dawn",  with its fulsome sense of adventure. Ever enigmatic,  Elgar could be making cryptic links between himself and his muse Alice, thus affirming the joy of life even at a time of sorrow.

More secret humour in the Two Songs op 60, poems purportedly by Pietro D'Alba, who was in fact young Carice's pet rabbit.  The words are Elgar's own, and whimsical, the compsoer claiming that they were folk tunes from "Leyrisch-Turasp, 1909", a place which doesn't exist.  Nonetheless, the fantasy gave Elgar a chance to write florid mock-Slavic drama, crashing climaxes blending with delicate expressiveness.

Pleading op 48 is a reverie which might suggest Richard Strauss in autumnal mood, but we're back to exuberance with Follow the Colours: a Marching Song for Soldiers  written for the Royal Albert Hall's Empire Day in 1908. The text, by a military officer,  is jingoistic,  but Elgar seems to relish the opportunity for high spirits. The deliberately four square rhythm evokes images of "Thousands, thousands of marching feet" stomping mindlessly in strict formation.  Thus The King'sWay isn't as banal as it might seem on the surface.  It surges forth with almost parodic expansiveness. "Let every voice in England say - God keep the way by night and day - The King of England's Way!"  But the poem - again by Alice, who must have had a sharper mind than she gets credit for, refers explicitly to the "newest street in London town - the Kingsway" which had recently been constructed. destroying much older parts of London in the process.

William Butler Yeats and George Moore collaborated on the play Grania and Diamid, a Celtic Revival tale of ancient Ireland. Elgar sets the Introduction with dark, brooding chords which suggest forests and mysterious forces. Hunting horns are complemented by harps, for this is an Irish, not a Teutonic Wagner saga.  "There are seven that pull the thread" is a keening song of mourning, with lush harps and strings, written for low female voice. It's Elgar, but he doesn't seem to have been much taken by it.

The second disc in this set features eleven songs for voice and piano (Nathalie de Montmollin, Barry Collett)  which have not previously been recorded.  They are enjoyable, but the first disc, with the orchestral songs, is the one to focus on.
Please also see my reviews of Hubert Parry Complete English Lyrics, also from SOMM HERE

Haunted Arabia - W Denis Browne

W. Denis Browne (1888-1915),  as a schoolboy at Greyfriars, Leamington Spa.  This photo might sum him up better than the usual photos of him in uniform, for his last music was written in June 1914. Almost exactly a year later, he would be killed at Gallipolli.  In this photo his youthful spirit  is captured forever, gazing wistfully but unafraid.  Browne went on to Cambridge and later studied with Busoni. He heard Stravinsky, and was impressed enough by The Rite of Spring and Petrushka to embark on his own ballet, never completed.  Today he's best known for a handful of songs, particularly To Gratiana, Dancing and Singing to a poem by Richard Lovelace (1617-1657).  Though that song is well represented on recordings,  most of the other songs are less well served.  I wish there were better versions on record of Arabia, for example, Browne's last completed song, which I've heard live in much better performance.

Arabia is an adventurous piece which seems to reach out, exploring new musical territory.  The poem, by Walter de la Mere, describes "the shades of Arabia, where the Princes ride at noon, 'mid the verduous vales and thickets under the ghost of the moon". The piano part moves with mysterious deliberation, firm single chords separated by silence, allowing the voice to ring out. The idea  might be to suggest a voice reaching over vast expanses. Not expanses of desert, though, but a "vaulted purple" where "flowers in the forest rise and toss into blossom against the phantom skies".  Warm breezes seem to propel the second verse, "Sweet is the music of Arabia" each line infused by gentle, swaying rhythms.  The vocal line rises high, and the piano part changes, suggesting the plucking of "strange lutes" that "ring loud with delight.......in the brooding silence of the night". Despite the beautiful sounds around him, the poet is haunted by someone, something others cannot see. "Stll eyes look coldly upon me, cold voices whisper and say "He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia, they have stolen his wits away". Not a romantic reverie ! Thus the jumbled images of moon and noon, of feverish, unhealthy imagination.  Ideal territory for the kind of English tenor who can express archness and horror behind luminous limpidity. Not straightforward at all. 

Les Arts Florissants : An English Garden

At the Barbican, London, Les Arts Florissants conducted by Paul Agnew, with soloists of Le Jardin de Voix in "An English Garden" a semi-staged programme of English baroque.   The term "garden" here refers to two of Sir William Christie's passions, music and gardens, and to the concept of baroque gardening, bridging nature and art.  Baroque gardens turned landscape into theatre, combining art and nature for maximum impact. 
Les Arts Florissants has for several seasons created "gardens"  where  music and song are arranged, like bouquets, to delight the senses.  This "garden" brought together the beauties of the English baroque, with highlights from Purcell,  Locke, Gibbons, Handel, Arne, Ward and Dowland.

Like a formal themed garden the programe was set out in two distinct parts, "The Mystery of Music" and "A Night of Revels". The scene was set by The Curtain Tune, an instrumental prologue to Matthew Locke's The Tempest (1674) an early English semi-opera adapting the spirit of Lully and Moliere to British theatrical tradition.  This Tempest was loosely based on The Tempest of William Shakespeare, where Nature, magic and art come together in glorious mayhem.  As the orchestra played, the singers entered the hall,  hidden in darkness, their voices ringing  out clearly.  Placing the two parts of Orlando Gibbons The Cries of London at the start and end of this "garden" gave it structure, but the choice was inspired.   Gibbons depicts the sounds of London, market traders calling out their wares "Hot apple pies, hot, Hot pippin pies, hot. Fine pomegranates, fine....buy a rope,,,white cabbage, white young cabbage".  Each brief cry follows its own rhythm and the interplay between these simple calls creates intricate polyphony. "Low " society transformed into "high" art.  Thence to Handel "O the pleasures of the plains" from Handel's Acis and Galatea , Purcell's If music be the food of love Z379 and Thomas Tomkins' Music Divine.

Lest all be gracious artifice, Thomas Arne's The Singing Club, a nod to the English taste for communal singing.  It's humorous - a good singer singing about a singer who can't sing too well.   Then a return to fantasy, with Handel and Purcell songs about music and the muse St Cecilia.   The songs also showcased individual instrumental colour - flutes, lutes, pipes and violins, paired with complementary voices. From Thomas Arne's The Fairy Prince, "Now all the air shall ring"  came the rousing final chorus "God Save the King!" Though Arne gave us our national anthem, the king in this case wasn't George III but the king of Fairyland, since Arne's masque  is an adaptation of Ben Jonson's Oberon, itself an adaptation of Shakespeare. One singer waved the Union Flag . I closed my eyes for a moment to concentrate on the music, but suddenly the whole audience burst out in a roar of spontaneous applause. The singers were also waving the flag of the European Union, and the audience loved it ! British culture connects to Europe. Were it not for Handel, Mendelssohn and many others, where would British music be ?  And the flags were perfectly appropriate, since the kings of Arnes's time came from Hanover.

Pealing bells ushered in the "Night of Revels"  with "O let the merry bells ring round" from Handel's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato.  Two Purcell songs about Night  and dreams "See, even night herself is here"  and "One Charming Night" from The Fairy Queen Z629 and John Ward's Come, sable night.  Sophie Daneman's semi-staging created great atmosphere. A singer herself, she's worked with Les ArtsFlorissants  for some years, creating sensitive semi staging.  Here she had the singers carry lights in the darkness, so we could see as well as hear  the patterns of interaction.  Night, though, isn't just for sleep.  Thus the group of songs for merriment, starting with "In these delightful,pleasure groves" from Purcell's The Libertine, or the Libertine destroyed Z600, followed by "Welcome black night"  and later "Cease these false spirits" from John Dowland's A Pilgrim's Solace which is about, to put it coyly, married love.  Two Bacchanals from Purcell (Z627 and Z360) release unruly spirits.  Men are pitted against women in Purcell's 'Tis women makes us love Z281. "Tis women makes us love, 'tis love that makes us sad. 'Tis sadness makes us drink, and drinking makes us mad!" Delivered, of course, with great panache.  Then the  famous "Fairest Isle, all isles excelling" from Purcell's King Arthur or the British Worthy Z628, soothing and graceful.  Night leads to morning and three songs of dawn from Handel and Purcell  Then, back we are to London at the break of day, with the bustle of market traders and callers in Part 2 of Gibbon's The Cries of London.
This well-planned Garden of Delights came to life with Paul Agnew leading Les Arts Florissants. 

Part of the Les Arts Flo mission is the nurturing of youthful talent : hence Le Jardin de Voix, the academy for young singers, whose soloists gave vivacious performances. Some are very promising and deserve a good future. Their names - Natasha Schnur, Natalie Pérez, Eva Zaïcik, James Way, Josep-Ramon Olivé and Padraic Rowan.

This review also appears in Opera Today.  Please also see my review of Julian Prégardien and Teatro del Mondo : Orpheus : Songs, madrigals and arias from the 17th century and lots more on Les Arts Flo and Frech baroque on this site

Photo: Roger Thomas