Time and Space : Holst, Vaughan Williams, Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams

Time and Space - songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, with Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams, William Vann and Jack Liebeck, new from Albion, highlighting the close personal relationship between the two composers. As the label is an offshoot of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, its choices are eclectic rather than mainstream, but illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams' life and work which might not otherwise be covered in mass market releases. While Albion's first collection "Heirs and Rebels" presented archive recordings of well known songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, the choices on this recording places less familiar songs - some unpublished -  by each composer beside each other for comparison and also their settings of the same texts.

Holst's fascination with visionary themes can be glimpsed in "Invocation to Dawn", from Holst's Six Songs Op15 H68 (1902-3). This was the first of his settings of his own translation from Sanskrit.  It's contemporary with his The Mystic Trumpeter (1904 rev. 1912), and works like Savitri Op 25 and the Choral Hymns to the Rig Veda Op. 26 (1908-12). While neither Holst nor RVW were conventionally religious, the ardent vocal line and rolling piano part in this song connects to transcendental themes prevalent in that era.   Holst includes three settings of Thomas Hardy, "In a Wood", "Between Us Now",  and "The Sergeant's Song", which text Vaughan Williams also used in Buonaparty (1908), which can be heard on the recent "The Song of Love" album, also from Albion. (Please read my review here). Holst's version is animated, more attuned to the irreverent satire in the poem, with Roderick Williams at his idiomatic best.  The suppressed passion in "I will not let thee go", to a poem by Robert Bridges might remind some of Vaughan Williams’ Silent Noon, from 1904, though Silent Noon is by far the masterpiece.

A E Housman verses inspired Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge (1909), and also Along the Field (1925-7). These songs, set for high voice and solo violin (Mary Bevan and Jack Liebeck) are exquisite studies in minor key modality, so refined that they seem to hover in  mystical trance.  In "We'll to the Woods No More", the vocal line stretches, with seemingly little dynamic variation,  mirrored by the violin.  But perhaps that is the point : the mood is so elusive that the song floats away, like a ghost.  "Along the Field" develops the mystery. The plaintive vocal line suggests  plainchant, or possibly vespers, for the lovers will soon be parted by death. The leaves of the aspen tree know what lies ahead but cannot  speak. "And I spell nothing in their stir" sings Bevan with hushed deliberation. Even the relatively cheerful "In the Morning" is melancholy, and "The Sigh that Heaves the Grasses" drips with portent.  The violin part in "Good-Bye" is subtly discordant, picking up on the unspoken emotions of the lad so abruptly dismissed by the object of his affections.  The text of "Fancy's Knell" resembles "Clun" from On Wenlock Edge, though the wordier scansion of this poem doesn't invite quite such a strong setting. The set ends with "With Rue my Heart is Laden", also set by George Butterworth, Vaughan Williams' version even more aphoristic and enigmatic. Although these songs are usually heard with tenor, the silvery timbre of Bevan's voice, in my opinion, enhances their strange, surreal magic. This perfomance is so beautiful that it makes this recording an absolute must.

Two settings of A Cradle Song to a text by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one by Vaughan Williams from 1905, the other By Holst from his Op.16 H6 (1903-5) contrast with Vaughan Williams' Blake's Cradle Song (1928) , the composer responding to the greater complexity of Blake's poem. Holst's Four Songs Op.14, H14 (1896-98)  are fairly early works, setting poems by Charles Kingsley, Henrik Ibsen and Heinrich Heine (both in English translation) and Robert Bridges.

Vaughan Williams' Bushes and Briars (1908), introduces the group of folk songs in this collection. Bushes and Briars is seminally important, since it was the first song the composer collected in the field, having heard it sung by a labourer in Essex in 1903. It's been performed hundreds of times in many forms, including by modern urban "folk", but here Roderick Williams brings out the sophistication of Vaughan Williams' transcription. The first verse is unaccompanied, as traditional ballad usually was, but the piano part develops it as art song, warmed by the natural sincerity of Williams' style. A memorable performance.  Vaughan Williams collected The Lark in the Morning (1908) in Essex, expurgating more ribald aspects of the original.  The Captain's Apprentice (1908) from a fishing community in Kings Lynn, was adapted into the Norfolk Rhapsody, on which the composer was working at that period.

Holst made sixteen arrangements of folk songs, two of which we have here, The Willow Tree (H83/6 1906-8), and Abroad as I was walking (H83/1). Holst's Four Songs for Voice and Violin (Op. 35,  H132, 1916-17)  display a more "modern" sensibility. There are no time signatures."Bar lines are used for coordination purposes, but the length of each bar varies freely according to the melodic line", as stated in the uncredited programme notes.  Two settings of Walt Whitman's texts from Whispers of Heavenly Death form the basis of the songs Darest Thou Now O Soul. Holst's version H72, 1904-5) is declamatory, delivered here with dramatic flair by Roderick Williams.  Vaughan Williams' version, which he was working on at the same period, incorporating the text into A Sea Symphony. Here it is heard in a setting for solo voice and piano, from 1925. The unison version for voices and string orchestra - a hymn with chamber orchestra - can be heard on Martyn Brabbins' recent recording of A Sea Symphony. (Please read more about that here).

Mystic Trumpeter blasts Brexit bar on Beethoven - Three Choirs Festival

Grand finale to the end of this year's Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral  3rd August 2019, with Beethoven's Symphony no 9, with Adrian Partington conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Three Choirs Festival Chorus,  with soloists Ilona Domnich, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Andrew Staples and David Stout, paired with  Gustav Holst's The Mystic Trumpeter op 18 H 71 (104 rev 1912) and David Matthews's Stars. The Three Choirs Festival always ends with a big choral number, and they don't come much more profound than Beethoven's Ninth. For two centuries The "Ode to Joy" has been loved by millions, all over the world, possibly the most-performed choral piece on the planet.  Suddenly, on the orders of Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party, it must be shunned. They turned their backs on the European Parliament when the anthem was sung, though presumably not on the money to be made from income, pensions, fringe benefits and lobbying.  Like playground bullies refusing to play except on their own rules.  When Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted in front of Hitler in 1942,  Heinrich Goebbels squirmed with inner rage because he knew what "Alle Menschen werden Brüder"meant.  Quietly Furtwängler was making a point since Hitler, who probably didn't understand but liked Beethoven's music.  Now it seems to have been decreed by Brexit supporters that , if thei party Leader doesn't like Beethoven, then no-one else should be allowed to hear it.  There are reports that activists have denounced its inclusion in the Three Choirs Festival (where it's been heard many times over the years).(Read more here).  The Will of the People must be obeyed even if that infringes on other people's rights ! Good for Adrian Partington and the Three Choirs Festival organization for standing up for common sense. And for Christianity, for that matter, since Christain communion is at the core of Three Choirs values. What would Jesus say ?

On pure musical terms (not that such things bother extremists) Beethoven's Ninth and Holst's The Mystic Trumpeter work extremely well together as a programme. Many connections, even if they don't sound the same (which is what Christian communion is about). Beethoven calls on "Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium", Joy, that spark of Divinity which brings mankind together in joyous celebration.  Holst's Mystic Trumpeter calls unseen from a vast distance. "Thy song expands my numb'd, imbonded spirit -nthou freest me, launchest me, floating and basking on Heaven's lake" "now pouring, whirling, like a tempest round me, now low, subdued...".  The trumpet calls, its melody echoed by the soprano, whose voice should shimmer with just enough vibrato to suggest cosmic ecstasy, as she follows leaving "the fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day" and finds serenity on another plane, the orchestral line expansive behind her as if it, too, were inhaling "grass, most air, and roses".  If  Beethoven included "Turkish"themes, Holst was inspired by Sanskrit concepts, though the text, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is equally mystic.  

In his second movement, Holst addresses "no other theme but love - . knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love". Note the lines, tumbling, flowing, wave after wave, echoed by different sections of the orchestra, the distant trumpet calling still further.   The third movement is darker - drum rolls , trombones and bassoons "conjure war's wild alarums"...."Lo! mid the clouds if dus the glint of bayonets, I see the grim-faced cannoniers ....the crackling of  the guns".   Highly graphic, and dramatic. Beethoven wrote his Ninth when the Naploeanic wars were living memory.  Holst was writing in the tense years before the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, when the probability of war would hav been felt by many.   Holst's finale is a heroic outburst. though it employs cymbals, brass, timpani and strings in full force it is not militaristic.  Thus "exulting, culminating song" is a "Hymn to the Universal God from universal man".  The last section is intoxicated with bliss :"A reborn race appears - a perfect world......war, sorrow, suffering gone - the rank earth purged - nothing but joy!" Somewhere up in the Heavens, Schiller, Beethoven, Whitman and Holst are having a cackle at experts who think The Will of the People is more important than God.   At the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, Partington will also conduct David Matthews’s Stars, a new work. More connections - Matthews edited The Mystic Trumpeter for perfomance.   The notes, on the Andrew Davis recording with Susan Gritton as soprano, are by David''s brother Colin.

Germans and Britons - Leipzig marks the End of the First World War

What real heroes did when it rained in the Somme

(For my piece on Vladimir Jurowski's inspired Eternal Flame concert for Armistice day, please read here)   From Leipzig Peterskirche, the Gedenkkonzert 100 Jahre Ende ertsen Weltkreig (Memorial Concert marking 100 years after the End of the First World War) - Max Reger, Rudi Stephan, Walter Braunfels, Gustav Holst, Ernest Farrar and Samuel Barber.  Alexander Shelley conducts the MDR-Rundfunkchor und MDR-Sinfonieorchester, broadcast via BR Klassik.  It's worth watching as well as listening, as the Peterskirche was bombed during the Second World War, remaining a ruin for many years. Appropriately the concert began with Max Reger's Totenfeier, a section from his incomplete Lateinisches Requiem Op. 145a. The word "Requiem" repeats, weaving through the orchestration like an unbreakable thread, expressing the idea of a funeral procession  

Rudi Stephan's Musik für Orkester in einem Satz (1910) followed. Stephan was killed in battle on 28th September 1915, aged only 28.  It's not a "war" piece, but its initial elegaic mood fits in well . Long , exploratory lines lead to wilder animation, trumpets and other brass calling forward.  Perhaps these are military, but perhaps not, since the instruments can signify different things in different times.  Elliptical lines : watch the trombone tubes moving back and forth. An extended inner section, hushed and mysterious, with muffled pulse, strings rising upwards, the top graced by clarinet, flutes and cello, delicate bell sounds for colour.  As the piece draws to a close the strings swell and a stange, angular melody emerges. It's whimsical yet also provocative, stimulating the orchestra into epressive outburst.  After a diminuendo, the temporary stillness gives way to more invention - whistling string lines, dizzy exuberance and emphatic final chords.  Not music of defeat or disillusion.  This isn't recycled retro but intelligent and highly original, reflecting the creative ferment of Secession Munich, and possibly the "modern" Germany of Weimar art and film and literature. Stephan is definitely on the radar in Germany. There are no less than three recordings of his opera Die ersten Menschen on the market.  It's so "Expressionist" that it's not easy to follow if you're expecting verisimo and washes of colour, but think in terms of Jungian archetypes, semi-pagan folklore and so on. Indeed, the spirit of Schoenberg Moses und Aron (1932) seems to be there in germ.  Imagine if Stephan had lived : he would have felt much common ground with Franz Schreker and Walter Braunfels.  

Throughout his whole career, Braunfels was obssessed by war and the causes of war. To reinterpret his passionate anti-militarism as soft centred "romantic" is a travesty.  Be careful which conductors you listen to. In this concert, he was represented by just one song  Auf ein Soldatengrab op 26 to a poem by Hermann Hesse, written in 1915. ".....Der Jugend wandelt licht in weiten Räumen und hört der Ahnen Chor aus dunklem Quell im heligen Berge träumen".  Please read HERE for more about Braunfels' Orchestral Songs and also look up "Braunfels" on the link below.   

Gustav Holst's Ode to Death (1919) blends voices and orchestra to create lush textures which suddenly ignite into crescendo. returning again to ethereal harmonies "Over the treetops I float thee along, over the rising and sinking waves, come lovely and soothing death, come with joy!". Harps and fine, bell-like tones in the orchestra suggest transcendence.  Ernest Farrar lived for a while in Dresden, not all that far from Leipzig,  so it was good to hear him represented here.   Like Stephan and Braunfels, Farrar was a soldier though he was killed only two days after arriving at the front.  His Heroic Elegy Op 36 was completed in 1916, before he went to war.  Unsurprisngly, it is a war piece, a slow march, lit by flares of intensity : not so much a funeral march biut the long hard slog of soldiers entering a  battlefield, hearing gunfire in the distance, the inexorable tread emphasized by pounding timpani.  The ending is striking - single phrases repeated with silence between, growing ever quieter til all sound disappears.  Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, in the context of the First World War is something of an anomaly, being Barber's 1966 adaptation of his Adagio for Strings. No ostensible 1914-1918 connectioins here other than that the text used is the Agnus Dei from the Requiem Mass with the words "Dona Nobis Pacem", which just happens to fit.  Sure the Americans entered the war in 1917, but wouldn't it have been fitting to acknowledge the French or the Belgians, Russians or Italians ?   Debussy Berceuse héroïque is about the same length, though without choir, and carries the same message : that patriotism born of love is better than nationalism born of hate.   


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Gustav Holst Orchestral works vol 4 Cotswolds Symphony - Andrew Davis, Chandos

Sir Andrew Davis is of one of the greatest conductors of British music
in our time, and Chandos is a label that specializes in British repertoire.  This alone should make this new recording of Gustav Holst's orchestral works by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra indispensible. But it is also a signifigant milestone because it includes an exceptionally idiomatic   performance of  Holst's early Symphony in F "The Cotswolds", so convincing that it should at last give this piece the recognition it is due. This disc is valuable too because the programme is cohesive, linking Holst's very early works with later pieces that hint at Holst's wider interests which gave his work a distinct personality.  This disc is also part of  Chandos's long standing series of Holst orchestral works conducted by Andrew Davis, which further adds to its authority. Altogether, a release that's leagues ahead of the market.
Completed in July 1900 and premiered by the Carl Rosa Orchestra in which Holst played, the Cotswolds Symphony (op8 H47) was was not a success.  It would have been unreasonable to expect more from a composer who was barely 25, but there is much more to it than has been revealed in recordings made over the years.  Perhaps the secret is to understand it in the context of the composer and his place in British music.  Davis, like Sir Adrian Boult before him, has an understanding of the full span of Holst's music.  The opening Allegro con brio is free-flowing and confident, evoking Elgar, a composer with whom Davis is so closely associated.  Hence the idiomatic punchiness, and crispness of attack.  This introduces the famous second movement, the Elegy in memoriam William Morris. A tentative, but probing introduction evolves gradually, with suggestions of the more sophisticated Egdon Heath. It rises steadily to a cresendo that is dignified, yet deeply felt. The agitato section surges, like a march, punctuated by brass and percussion. The main theme flares up again, before discreetly receding.  The title "Cotswolds" is something of a misnomer,  suggesting touristy images of cottages, chintz and cream teas. But to Holst, an idealist and a thinker, William Morris was a radical with proto-socialist sympathies. The Arts and Crafts movement predicated on the idea of craftsmen working for themselves, not dependent on commercial capitalism.  This affects interpretation and performance.  Fortunately, Davis understands who Morris was and what he meant to Holst. No false sentimentality here but deep conviction, much closer to the spirit of the piece.  Thus the sudden change of mood in the Scherzo, and the return of the confidence in the Allegro now expanded in much fuller-throated orchestration in the Finale.  Holst's music marches forwards : it's not looking back.  Good use of brass and warm-sounding horns, like wind in the sails, propelling the music onwards.

The Cotswolds Symphony ends on similarly upbeat form as A Winter Idyll (H31 1897) begins.  Again, Andrew Davis's understanding of the idiom makes a diffrence. Winter here is an almost demonic force of Nature, sweeping all before it, craggy peaks and soaring vistas.  The main theme (trumpets and brass) repeats  and string lines swell, as if propelled  by the elements, turning on sudden, capricious points.  One could detect the influence of Nordic saga - Wagner, Grieg or even a hint of Sibelius, nine years Holst's senior.

Davis makes the point further with Holst's Indra (op 13, H66 1903),  a large scale tone poem inspired by Sanskrit literature.  Like so many of his contemporaries all over Europe, "orientalism" fascinated because it opened up new opportunities of tonal colour and form.   Indra breaks new ground, giving Holst a chance to explore a consciousness outside the western mainstream.  For all its lushness, Indra tells a violent story. In the Rig Veda, the god Indra (male) battles a dragon who has seized the rain clouds, throwing the land into drought, its people into ruin.  The brass fanfares are militant, suggesting perhaps the cosmic forces being brought to bear.  Like A Winter Idyll, Indra is a saga. Davis emphasizes the structure and colour - wonderful trumpet calls, dissolving into finer textures,  balancing the warrior with the mystic, bringing out the spirituality in the piece.

Davis's recognition of the spirituality in Holst shapes his approach to Invocation (Op 19 no 2 H75, 1911) for cello (Guy Johnstone) and orchestra.  Subtitled "A Song of the Evening" , the piece begins and ends sensa misura, allowing the soloist to float the line, so the piece moves freely through many smaller incarnations. Johnstone's tone is rich and sensual, evoking allusions to exotic, non-western concepts of sensuality. The obvious connection here is Holst's Lyric Movement for viola and orchestra, but there are links, too, to Holst's other mystical works, including Venus in The Planets, and indeed to works by other composers of the period, such as Szymanowski, whom Holst may not have known but who shared his aesthetic.

A Moorside Suite (H173, 1928), heard here in Holst's 1932 arrangement for string orchestra, was originally conceived for brass band.  The first section is boisterous, but the second, a Nocturne,is more mystical than most repertoire for brass band.  Although it's an interlude before the final March (con larghezza), it is a beautiful miniature, the solo violin line at once fragile and assured.   The Scherzo (H192, 1933-4)  is a worthwhile conclusion to this collection, connecting the early Holst of the Cotswolds Symphony with Holst shortly before his unexpected death,  when he was woirking on what might have been his only other orchestral symphony. Though it lasts but six minutes, it's inventive and covers a lot of material.  

Joyous but sharp - Rattle, LSO, New Music Britain

Sir Simon Rattle, photo; Oliver Helbig, courtesy Askonas Holt

Sir Simon Rattle and the  London Symphony Orchestra marked the opening of the 2018-2019 season with a blast.  Literally, for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's new piece Donum Simoni MMXVIII was an explosion of brass - four trumpets, trombones, horns and tuba, bursting into the Barbican Hall. When Sir Harry makes a statement, he makes it big and bold !  Short as it was, this fanfare was more substantial than it might have seemed at first.  Like the composer himself, it was forthright and direct - no messing about.  Hence the gruff low timbres and pugnacious sassiness, punctuated by percussion, with woodwind interjection, and later a tuba solo. Characteristic Birtwistle quirks and earthiness.  Oddly enough the piece sounded like the way Birtwistle speaks in conversation. Since Birtwistle and Rattle have had a long relationship that goes back to the mid 1970's, Donum Simoni is personal, like an autographed portrait of the composer with an affectionate dedication to an old friend.

In a masterstroke of provocative but inspired programing, Rattle followed Birtwistle with Gustav Holst. Holst's Egdon Heath (A homage to Thomas Hardy) op 47 (1927) is rooted in the idea of timeless landscape.  Like Hardy's Wessex, Egdon Heath doesn't exist, though it feels as though it should.  Low rumbling harmonies, long, ambiguous string lines that seem to be hovering between tonalities: like mist above a heath.  Tempi speed up, but clear, long lines return and an anthem-like motif emerges : almost Elgarian in the way that it evokes time and place.  A single trumpet rang clear and the sounds dissolved into the ether around them. Though Rattle has built his reputation on new music, he has done a lot of Elgar and Sibelius. This Egdon Heath was a beautifully textured tone poem rich with feeling.  Rattle is making connections between Holst and Birttwistle, who creates imaginary landscapes, rough hewn from almost organic forces, merging past, present and future in co-existing layers.  Some may scream that Holst isn't "modern" but yes he was, in his own way.

Rattle's gift for intelligent musical juxtapositions is one of his strengths, from which we can learn.
Rattle and Mark-Anthony Turnage have worked together for decades, too. Rattle premiered Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield'  with the LSO at the Barbican last year (read more here) and with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. Turnage's Dispelling the Fears from 1994/5 is a much earlier work.  Trumpet players Philip Cobb and Gábor Tarkövi are principals of the LSO and the Berliner Philharmoniker respectively, so this performance was also a drawing together of past, present and future.  The two trumpets stalk each other in dialogue and at cross-purposes, connecting and disconnecting with the orchestra around them.  Though it is a serious work, there's wit in it too, which connected it, in turn, to Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony.

Britten's Spring Symphony (1948) is big, flamboyant and bursting with good-humoured high jinks -  an excellent choice with which to open a new season.  Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra were joined here by soloists Alice Coote, Elizabeth Watts and Allan Clayton  with the London Symphony Chorus (Simon Halsey), the Tiffin Boy's Choir, the Tiffin Girls' School Choir and the Tiffin Children's Chorus (James Day).  The Spring Symphony is more than symphony : it is a piece of music theatre, where visuals count.   Here, the  youth choruses walked into the Barbican Hall and sang from the edge of the platform, up one aisle and on the stage itself.   Not quite as stunning as last year's Berlioz Damnation of Faust when Rattle and the LSO were joined by young singers who seemed to materialize everywhere (Please read more here).   But the difference lay in the music itself.  Cheerful as the Spring Symphony is, there's something very "English" about it, and its high spirits need a certain degree of discretion.  In terms of Britten's output it occupies a strange place. It's not Peter Grimes, but closer to another genre dear to Britten's heart : community music-making for the sheer pleasure of making music together.  

Thus the sprawling structure, four parts with twelve distinct sections, which together form a large, impressionistic portrait of Spring in its many manifestations. A Birtwistle "landscape" of sorts   If there's any symphonic predecessor, it might be Mahler's Symphony no 3 where summer rushes in with exuberant vigour.  Like the god Pan, artists don't follow rules : they create.  Thus the many different texts from various sources,  some medieval, some modern, and the variety of settings and styles.  Wisely, Rattle didn't try to homogenize them, but kept the separate parts distinct, so each shone on its own merits.   A blazing "Shine out, fair sun !" set the mood. There are many Brittenesque elements in the piece which would be fun to isolate, and relate to, later works, but it is enough that the work as a whole flows naturally as a series of tableaux.  Lively performances : everyone having a good time.  whih is as things should be. Rattle, a consummate communicator, knows how to share his enthusiasm with performers and with audiences. A lot of fuss these days is made of grim-faced pious "music education" but this is how things actually work in the real world.  Note the final section "London to thee I do present the merry month of May". 

Please see my review of Rattle's second concert with the LSO Britain and European New Music - Britain's connections with Janáček, Szymanowski and Sibelius.

Prom 17 - transcendental Parry, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Brabbins

Thunder and lightning above the Royal Albert Hall before Prom 17  with Martyn Brabbins conductingthe BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.   Parry's Symphony no 5, the Symphonic Fantasia ,doesn't actually have much to do with the First World War, or Englishness for that matter. It's a brilliantly original work,  which should be appreciated on its own musical terms. Parry's place in British music, and European music, deserves far more attention.   The BBC's fixation with non-musical agendas reinforces cliché and shallow thinking to the detriment of the music itself.

Parry's Symphony no 5, the  Symphonic Fantasia, is a brilliantly original work, looking forwards yet built upon Parry's very deep knowledge of his musical antecedents.   In 1883, he had written of Schumann's Symphony no 4 that it "can be felt to represent in its entirety the history of mental and emotional conditions such as may be grouped around one centre.... the conflict of impulses and desires, the different phases of thought and emotion, and the triumph or failure of the different forces which seem to be represented all give the impression of ....being perfectly consistent in their relationship to one another." 

Thus Parry's symphony - for it is a symphony in four movements (allegro, lento, scherzo and moderato) - encompasses infinite variety in tightly structured coherence. The programmatic titles, Stress, Love Play and Now, are in themselves nothing new, but Parry marks the various sub themes and developments not with conventional German or Italian terms, but with words like "brooding", "pity" and "revolt" which allow interpretive freedom.  Its open-ended, free-spirited nature welcomes new performers, inviting them in, rather than imposing on them.  This matters,  since Parry held strong humanistic and ethical views.   Please read my piece on Parry's The Soul's Ransom HERE.  Some teachers teach students what to do, while others teach students how to think for themselves.  Parry was the latter type : more self effacing than the dominant Stanford and in the long term perhaps a greater creative influence on other composers.

Though Parry in this symphony was thinking back to Schumann and Brahms, the innovative nature of this piece harks to Carl Neilsen's Symphony no 2 "The Four Temperaments", and quite possibly more. It's intricate patterns of theme, recapitulation, development and elongation show, says Jeremy Dibble, "a forward looking attitude to modern structural procedures.  For this reason alone it merits a firmer place in the canon of cyclic works, and perhaps more important still it deserves to be more widely recognized as one of the finest and most assured utterances in British symphonic literature".  If anyone can make a case for Parry as a beacon of modern British music, it would be Martyn Brabbins, whose repertoire spans the late 19th and 20th centuries.   This was a powerful performance, very clearly thought through, much more coherent than when Siniasky conducted the piece at the Proms in 2010.  While  Adrian Boult and Matthias Bamert remain invaluable, Brabbins, with his alertness to the sophisticated inventiveness in the piece,  reveals new insights.

Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending is so extraordinary that even though we've heard it a million times, it still has the power to  astonish.  It's so moving that it always works, whatever the performance. Tai Murray, a former BBC New Generation artist, is technically gifted, shaping the long lines with great charm, suggesting the fragility of the lark.  But there is more to this piece than refinement. I would have preferred more emotional engagement, bringing out the heart rending sense of Sehnsucht of really great performances. Perhaps if we hadn't heard this piece so often we might not expect so much, but how could we live without it ?   But the magic of The Lark Ascending worked yet again : the Proms audience went wild with joy.   
 
With Hubert Parry's Hear My Words, ye People (1894) the organ loft lit up. The organist was Adrian Partington,  evidently enjoying the majesty of the Royal Albert Hall organ.   Just as impressive was  the BBC National Chorus of Wales, as focussed and as precise as they were in last week's Mahler Symphony no 8. Please read more about that here.  Though Parry wrote Hear My Words,  ye People for enthusiastic amateurs, with top notch singers like these, the anthems rang out with magnificent conviction.  The soloists were Ashley Riches and Francesca Chiejina.  This isn't an overblown extravaganza, but all the better for that as it shows the intimacy of Parry's style even when writing for choir, organ and (minimal) orchestra.  Gustav Holst's Ode to Death (1919) blends voices and orchestra to create lush textures which suddenly ignite into crescendo.  returning again to ethereal harmonies "Over the treetops I float thee along, over the rising and sinking waves, come lovely and soothing death, come with joy!".  Harps and fine, bell-like tones in the orchestra suggest transcendence.  

In Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 3  the "Pastoral"  winds and bassoons murmured, as dark and impenetrable as smoke, a rather apposite image since the piece was written after RVW's experiences in the trenches, collecting bodies from fields which should have produced crops.  A  violin melody wafted upwards. Like the Lark it ascends, but its ascent seemed haunted. The natural trumpet in the second movement sounded deliberately hollow, like a trumpet blown by an ordinary soldier, perhaps not quite in tune.  A horn repeats the motif : the last Post meets the last Trumpet at the End of Time. What might the robust dances in the scherzo represent ?  Perhaps this is a threnody not only for those killed in the trenches but for an innocence that cannot return.  Francesca Chiejina’s voice materialized from high up in the balcony, which in the Royal Albert Hall is very far away indeed.  This is important because it creates a sense of distance.  Whatever the soprano might signify, the sound should be otherworldly.  That's why the song is mysterious vocalize. I don't even think it's meant to be an angel or anything quite so comforting, but a reminder that there are things  that are beyond human comprehension and distances that can never be bridged. 

But what of this Proms audience  ?  Even in the expensive seats, people were fidgetting, not paying attention, behaving as if they were at home in front of their TVs.  Some walked out, even after Hear My words, ye People and the Ode to Death.  Why weren't they paying attention to serious subjects and seriously good musicianship ?  Therein lies the danger of marketing music as consumer disposable.   Eventually audiences assume that as long as they've paid for something, they don't need to make an effort to put anything of themselves into the equation.   Maybe what we need is marketing that respects the art it is supposed to serve.  [Since writing this, I've heard from people who weren't able to attend because the Prom sold out almost immediately. All the more it's a shame that those who did get tickets didn't care enough about the music. The ones walking out after the choral pieces were cheerfully heading off to the pub. So much for the music and indeed for the subject ].

Please also read Robert Hugill in Opera Today

Light and illusion - First Night of the Proms 2018

The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall - brilliant photo by Daniel Curtis

An astonishing First Night of the Proms 2018 with 59 Productions, indubitably the stars of the second half of the evening, transforming the Royal Albert Hall into a pulsating blaze of coloured lights.  Fantastic theatre! As a community event,  it would be hard to beat, and it was great fun. The  young singers behind the orchestra will never forget the experience, and good for them, and neither will most of the audience. This is the sort of audacious flair that used to mark the BBC Proms in the Roger Wright era. This was a welcome change from the formulaic mindlessness that BBC Radio 3 increasingly descends to, where music is pushed aside in favour of everything else.  Has someone finally twigged that music is the goose that lays the golden egg ?  Starve it and you might as well succumb to Murdoch and Classic FM.
Anna Meredith's Five Telegrams was full of incident, the lights round the hall pulsating to big flashing chords and loud noises.  Sakari Oramo, with his customary good nature, gave the piece a good show, and the BBC SO seemed to be in party mode, so the performance was hugely enjoyable though I'm not convinced that it would have the same impact without the special effects it was created for.   Read more about it here.  Nonetheless, maybe at last there's someone behind the Proms who cares about music, as opposed to the tickboxes and targets management drones connect to.  The premise behind Meredith's Five Telegrams was the First World War which formulaic bots need to reference, willy nilly.  But the mind behind the programme was also musical.  
Before Five Telegrams, Ralph Vaughan Williams Towards the Unknown Region and Gustav Holst's  The Planets.  They're not connected just because they're part of the First World War theme show.  It's pure coincidence that they were written at that time. What they do represent is a change in musical thinking. "Darest thou, O Soul, Walk out with me towards the Unknown Region ?".  Quiet pizzicato footsteps  suggest tentative awakenings. Very quickly, though, the piece enters new territory. The boundaries of tonality start to stretch : Ravel and even Debussy seem to beckon Vaughan Williams forward. Though Charles Villiers Stanford is inevitably mentioned , RVW's true mentor would appear to be Hubert Parry, whose horizons were wider and more sophisticated.  Thus the music wells up with heartfelt new energy. "We float in Time and Space"   In the words of Walt Whitman, RVW seems to have found inspiration to head forth towards the future.
Holst's The Planets is good First Night material but, since it's ubiquitous, we might forget just how experimental it may have seemed when new.  Although the programmatic titles are so embedded in our reception, Holst initially planned to use non-descriptive titles. As has been said many times, Holst knew Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, which Sir Henry Wood conducted at the Proms in 1912.  The Planets, while conceived on an opulent scale, isn't symphonic but composite, each section with distinctive character.  It's "modern" on its own terms.  Everyone loves Jupiter, but in many ways, Neptune is the most eclectic, gradually dissolving and disintegrating.  Oramo paced Neptune carefully, drawing out its exquisite textures so it seemed to hover in the air . "We float in Time and Space" all over again, without words.  A very refined, intelligent performance.  Familiar as the suite may be, Oramo wasn't doing routine  but seemed inspired.
Pulling this whole First Night together, Oliver Knussen's Flourish with Fireworks, in tribute to Knussen, whose death this week is a loss to British  and modern music on many levels. Ollie was a monumental figure in every way. As Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who knew him well, said, he  "was driven by the same need for artistic authenticity and never conceded to the easier world of ego and glitter. His astounding ear and acute understanding of works allowed him a control ranging from the smallest details to the main structure; his gesture was of exemplary thrift; his interpretations were models of clarity, deeply dramatic with warm concentration. His colossal erudition led him to make programming choices dependent on an original and very personal musical vision, nourished by an insatiable curiosity and never based on personal career goals, which he overlooked. A great servant of the music of his time, he influenced generations of young talents through his teaching, whether as composer or conductor. His humility and self-effacement in favour of others were a manifestation of his selflessness and generosity."  Knussen didn't write down all the music in his head, but he gave so much to others that his legacy will live on. He packed more into 66 years than some people would in several lifetimes.  Flourish with Fireworks is typical Knussen - lively and concise. It opens up possibilities. Therefore, a very appropriate complement to Vaughan Williams and Holst .

Grab Gustav Holst's Holster !

Knickers to you !

Gustav Holst's Falstaff - At the Boar's Head

John Tomlinson, Philip Langridge.  Felicity Palmer, Elise Ross and David Wilson-Johnson. the greatest English singers of their time, all still young and vigorously in their prime. An ideal way into Holst's At the Boar's Head (1925)  on BBC Radio 3 HERE.  The voices absolutely matter in this cheerful one-act opera, which springs from Shakespeare's Henry IV and in particular the scene at the Boar's Head tavern. Voices utterly dominate, since Holst was inspired by the text in the plays, which he read while enjoying the score of John Playford's The English Dancing Master and transcripts of folk tunes collected by Cecil Sharp. The words seem to come alive in his imagination. as though, as he said, the music replicated the plays. This context shapes the opera  which predicates on the interplay of different voices and on the syntax of speech. Thus orchestral links are minimal, and oriented towards sturdy dances. David Atherton and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra don't have a great deal to do but mark the lively counterpoint and pace.  But what wonderful singing - sharply articulated, lively, perfect diction and mastery of tongue-twisting lines, such as would have thrilled the audience of a play with incidental music.  The dialogue betweem Tomlinson's Falstaff and Langridge's Prince Hal is close to ideal.

"Bye the bye", Holst wrote to Jane Johnson, "Have you ever tried declaiming 'Shall packhorses  and Hollow pampered jades Which cannot go but thirty mile a day Compare with Caesars and Cannibals and Trojan Greeks  Nay, rather damn them with King Cereberus and let the welkin roar". But at the premieres in Manchester and Golders Green, audiences were not amused.  As Imogen Holst wrote "Listeners felt cheated, for as soon as they got hold of a tune, it woud be snatched away from them, and woven, with the utmost cunning, into a restlessly changing pattern that baffled the ear." yet Holst was following Shakespeare, if not to the letter but in the spirit of the play. "Not one syllable had been distorted", she wrote " from its natural rhythm and inflection for the sake of fitting in the tunes. And each word came through clearly, for the orchestration was so light that it resembled 'a succession of pin pricks!"  

Fortunately now we can listen to At the Boar's Head without expecting a musical, and appreciate it for what it is. 

Prom 13 Shotgun marriage? No, Holst the Planets in context

Good old Holst The Planets with Boulez and Luca Francesconi? Superficially, this might seem a shotgun marriage. But Susanna Mälkki  brought out the connections, which run far deeper than the populist media might expect.  It's easy to forget how innovative the piece is, and how edgy it must have seemed at first. Holst knew Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, which Sir Henry Wood premiered at the 1912 Proms. Echoes of Debussy La Mer surface, significantly, in "Neptune". The Planets was considered "difficult" when new, because it is difficult, but the idea that new music should be rejected on kneejerk principle is relatively recent. 
 
Mälkki drew from the BBC SO a performance that sounded audaciously fresh and vibrant. Holst  urged Sir Adrian Boult to make "Mars, the Bringer of War"  sound "more unpleasant and more terrifying".  Mälkki led the attack with spirit, the percussion rattling nervously,as if impatient to break out in a fight, as Holst intended.  Hearing the serene "Venus" with this Mars ringing in the memory was unsettling, but purposefully so, Peace can't be taken for granted. "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" shook things up. The first section rushed capriciously,  but the repetitions in the middle suggest turbulence, rushing winds that propel the music forward. The playful "star music" was wittily defined, setting the tone for "Jupiter" with its suggestions of a portly planet trying to dance. Well-defined rhythms, swaying from side to side, accentuated with bells and low brass. The theme would appear in Hubert Parry's Jerusalem, (1916) , the words "green and pleasant land" later taking on connotations which neither Parry nor Holst might have expected. 

Saturn began with well-paced steadiness : the ticking of a clock, the tolling of bells, or the footsteps of someone old and bent.  Mälkki could show how Saturn relates to Venus, the serenity of youth enriched with depth. As the ostinato grew louder, the strings and brasses soared with confidence. This "Uranus" sparkled with manic energy, though the fanfares and powerful climax suggested that magic can be dangerous.  And thus Neptune was liberating, its strange chromatics like a whole new musical language. Holst called this "Neptune the Mystic", signifying the planet's arcane meaning in astrology, while Debussy in La Mer referred to Neptune, the god of the sea. The Elysian Singers  sang wonderfully abstract harmonies,  Oddly enough the cries of the child in the audience added to the surreal effect.  To borrow a phrase, this was like "music from another planet".

Mälkki used to conduct the elite Ensemble Intercontemporain, which Boulez founded. She's one of the most important new music specialists around, and, having worked closely with the composer himself, is an extremely authoritative interpreter. No need for snide remarks about her gender: Mälkki is good because she is good. This performance of the orchestrated Notations I-IV and VII   captured the spirit of free-wheeling inventiveness that transforemd Boulez's original hailku for piano into a lively romp for large orchestra. Deftly conducted.

Boulez's Notations I-IV and VII   are now so familiar  that there was much anticipation for the UK premiere of Luca Francesconi's Duende (the dark notes) commissioned for Leila Josefowicz. It received its premiere at the beginning of 2014, and was planned for last year's Proms, but Josefowicz had her third child.  Francesconi  (b 1956) is a well established and respected composer, best known for his chamber music, which Mälkki and Irvine Arditti, among others, have championed for a long time. Read HERE about Mälkki's views on Francesconi's Quartett, which was unfairly trashed by the London media who seem to pride themselves on being obtuse, since facetiousness is better clickbait than comprehension.  Read my review HERE.  For a good analysis of Duende, read HERE about the Turin performance (in Italian).

Duende does benefit from careful listening. It's almost zen-like in its quiet contemplation. The rustlings with which it starts develop into a  palette of sounds which move elusively, ever changing and morphing into new directions. Josefowicz's brilliance lies in her ability to blend extreme virtuosity with intelligent refinement and emotional depth. As the piece progressed, longer chords stretch, creating magical ellipses, undercut by subtle angular bowing. Midway, tempi increased.. I thought of Xenakis's Pithoprakta, written the year Francesconi was born, though the textures in Duende are much more transparent. This gives way to a darkly mysterious section, written with utmost restraint, where the lines of the violin are surrounded by long chords in the orchestra. It's as if the "waves" in the music were being pulled by mysterious tides. The last six minutes give Josefowicz a great range to explore, over a foundation of two-note repetitions in the orchestrra. Magical -  like aural starlight. Not all so far from the world of The Planets after all.