Vaughan Williams Symphonies 3 & 4 Martyn Brabbins Hyperion

Latest in the Hyperion series, Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphonies no 3 and 4, with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded in late 2018 after a series of live performances. Following on from  A Sea Symphony (read more here)  and A London Symphony, this series is proving to be a major contribution to the discography. Vivid, thought-through performances, immensely rewarding.

In this Vaughan Williams Symphony no 3, the introduction to the Molto moderato seems to vibrate as if from within. Deliberately ambiguous textures, constantly shifting and unsettled. Despite the poignant  violin, (which might suggest The Lark Ascending) this is not complacent.  As Vaughan Williams himself wrote, "It’s really wartime music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night in the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres and we went up a steep hill and there was wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset. It’s not really lambkins frisking at all, as most people take for granted."  The oboe and cor anglais intensify the irony, for these instruments remind us what the fields of France might have been before they became battlegrounds.

The horn solo with which the Lento movement begins further reinforces the battlefield connotations, at once a reveille and and Last Taps. Gradually lines stretch forward, but the landscape is still haunted by the ambiguities of the first movenment , the panorama seen, as it were behind smoke and rain.  The trumpet cadenza, played without valves sounds deliberately hollow, as if blown not quite in tune by an ordinary foot soldier : too much polish would not work. Yet more irony, since it takes considerable skill on the part of a trained professional to achieve such results.  The high, ascendant tessitura suggests gradual change of perspective, upwards into another realm. Does the trumpet here foretell the Last Trumpet at the End of Time ?  In the third movement, bright figures suggest freedom.  They introduce the vigourous, earthy dances of the scherzo, which may or may not signify the music of earlier times with which Vaughan Williams was so familiar. But are these dances bucolic or brutalist ?  This symphony operates on many different levels.

In the final movement, Vaughan Williams employs a human voice, (Elizabeth Watts) albeit one singing ethereal wordless vocalize.  If the trumpet at the end of the second movement signifires the Last Trumpet, the voice here might signify angels, but not neccessarily. Perhaps it’s a reminder that some things are beyond human comprehension and may never be bridged.  Elizabeth Watts' timbre is pure and unworldly, with just enough warmth to suggest some tantalizing form of comfort. Her voice echoes from afar, for distance matters : there is a dividing line between this world and whatever may or may not lie ahead.  The re-entry of the orchestra  brings us back to earth. There are echoes of the dances in the scherzo, of the high string tessituras and wind instruments, now embellished by harp and celeste.  The expansive, searching lines now rise with greater fullness than before, yet recede into near-silence. The voice continues, alone.

Of his Symphony no 4 in F minor, Vaughan Williams told Sir Henry Wood, "I don't like the work itself much 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".
Brabbins shapes the introduction so it seems to explode with fierce but controlled force.  Although this fanfare might seem 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 "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 (again, Biblical significance) ablaze, trombones and tuba add 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.

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 rises, moving ever upwards.  A sense of unease : tense pizzicato creating a fragile though regular beat. The flute melody, exquisitely played, has a poignant quality: painfully alone but unbowed.  Wildness returns 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. The swaggering thrust of the first movement returns, angular dissonances flying in all directions, clod-hopping ostinato suggesting grotesque horror.  The Finale is "con epilogo fugato" : no easy resolution, no easy answers.  Given Brabbins' grounding in modern and modern British music, his approach to this symphony is particularly interesting, full of insight and freedom. intuitively executed.

The bonus on this recording is the premiere of Saraband, taken by Brabbins from an unpublished manuscript. This brief cantata, for voice, chorus and orchestra, with David Butt-Philip as soloist, sets lines from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, describing Helen of Troy. Drafted in 1913-14, but not completed, the work was set aside by other pressures of work. Even in embryo, it's an interesting work which bears the mark of the composer at this fertile stage in his career.

David Sawer Rumpelstiltskin, April\March - Martyn Brabbins, BCMG, NMC

From NMC specialists in modern British music, David Sawer Rumpelstitlskin, with Martyn Brabbins conducting the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the team who premiered the ballet in 2010 and also the Rumpelstiltkin Suite (2011) featured here, recorded at a performance at the Wigmore Hall in 2013.  Rumpelstiltskin was one of the BCMG's most successful commissions : this commercial release has long been awaited.

Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale so grim even Disney stays clear. A bankrupt miller fools bailiffs, claiming that his daughter can spin straw into gold.  Up pops an ugly dwarf, who staves off the crisis, but keeps the girl prisoner. Though the miller was lying about the girl's ability to spin gold from straw, the Dwarf makes the scam come true.  The King is fooled and makes the girl his queen. When the dwarf returns to collect his payoff, the the girl steals the secret of the spell and gets rid of him by revealing his name. He shatters into many pieces. The girl's as dishonest as her father was. She thinks she's entitled to riches she didn't earn, and destroys the outsider to whom she owed her good fortune. What kind of moral does this tell? Sawer's take on the tale is uncompromising : it's a parable for modern times.

The fully staged original (Stewart Laing) presented the tale with stark stylization, the set a box-like structure which emphasized the claustrophia : scams are being woven, caught up in their own mad logic. Even then, though, music was integral to the narrative.  Members of the BCMG moved on stage in and out of the set, the action standing still at critical points to highlight solo players. Effectively, instruments as singers, telling the story without words. The idea of weaving and stalking flowed from the structure of the score. One ensemble with muffled tuba, trumpet, horn, clarinets, oboe, flute, bassoon, bass - dark, ominous - represented one force. The other, smaller ensemble led by harp, with violin, viola, cello represented something more fragile. At first, the girl, but later the Dwarf, destroyed when she loses her innocence. Both groups merge and change like a puzzle "spun" from sound on different levels. Interpretively, this expresses the changing alliances in the plot, the good becoming evil, the strong becoming weak.

Sawer's Rumpelstilstkin Suite concentrates the intensity still further. In the first movement, "The Idle Boast", tuba and bassoon suggest the miller's bombast, and probably also the Dwarf's pride. Trumpets call out, "naming" the miller with sounds of alarm, much as the girl eventually names the Dwarf. As the spell takes hold, the harp, winds and strings, evoke the sound of busy spinning - percussive strikes imitating the shuttle of the spinning wheel flying frantically back and forth. Gradually, the pile of gold rises higher and higher til perhaps we can't see the girl anymore behind the wall of booming orchestral sound. Trumpets announce "The Wedding and Coronation" but what are the baleful sounds of bassoon and clarinet telling us ? The procession goes on its merry way, figures repeating as if in perpetual motion. Bassoon and tuba dance along : as long as surfaces shine, no-one questions. All must be gold.  "The Guessing Game" is brief but tense, strings duelling brass and winds. In the "The Dwarf Alone", the mood is darker : the harp at its lowest register, the brass and winds pacing tense patterns, as if the Dwarf was stomping his feet.  The trumpet blows raspberries, cruelly mocking the Dwarf's dilemma. Rumpelstiltskin does his last dance, clumsy, grotesques, with strident  interjections from the brass, long, high pitched screams and turbulent circular lines suggesting upheaval. The sharp percussive sounds which once suggested the shuttle of the spinning wheel return.  The Dwarf dies but the girls keeps spinning her scam.

Cat's-eye (1986) is an early work, but already Sawer's distinctive feel for dramatic dialectic is apparent. Instruments operate in pairs and in larger groups, with piano and harp at the centre, interacting with nervous, jerky frisson, in constantly changing patterns, each of the seven sections developing what went before. Sustained chords contrast with staccato, moments of near-silence with explosive outburst. Like the sense of perpetual motion in the Rumpelstiltskin Suite, Cat's-Eye generates and regenerates itself with inventive energy.

With April\March (2106), Sawer adapts concepts of time and time reversal, to create an intricate puzzle.  Note the backslash in the title ! Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges's short story A survey of the Works of Herbert Quain,  Sawer experiments with ideas of symmetry, rules subverted and reformulated, sequences moving backwards as well as forward. A melody is heard as if from a distant past, but its lines blur, as if it were being heard back to front.  "Time", writes Steph Power for NMC, "is key to Sawer's music on many levels. It's the precision of his timing, allied with an instinct for structural proportaion and elegance that enables him to explore oppositional tensions with such verve. Boldness and clarity of texture, surprise, economy of ecxpression and an ear for the catchily skew-whiff combine in ways that see-saw between equilibrium and dis-equilbrium, while always remaining cogent  and direct".  Though this music is accessible to listen to, it isn't easy to play.  Martyn Brabbins and The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group perform it with the precision and idiomatic panache it deserves.

Dramatic new Elgar Caractacus - Martyn Brabbins, Hyperion

Edward Elgar's Caractacus op 35 (1898), conducted by Martyn Brabbins, from Hyperion.  This is an important release. The recording by Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra, from 1993 on Chandos has dominated the market for decades. The Charles Groves recording on vinyl is long out of print, now only available in fragments in the Warner set. Hickox is the market leader, too, because he's good, but Brabbins could raise the bar again : a livelier, more animated performance, due perhaps to the fact that Brabbins is conducting the Orchestra of Opera North.  Caractacus gets a bad press because it is very much a product of its time, a grand oratorio for massed chorus, burdened down by the  libretto, by Henry Arbuthnot Acworth, an Indian Civil Service official, who had retired to Malvern, who had provided the text for Elgar's King Olaf two years before. Brabbins approaches Caractacus as music drama. The performances he gets from the orchestra, The Hudddersfield Choral Society and an excellent group of soloists, Elizabeth Llewellyn, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Roland Wood, Christopher Purves and Alistair Miles, are so vivid that they express the adventurous spirit behind the clumsiness of the text.

Caractacus is an epic oratorio about an ancient Briton King called
Caractacus — his tribe were a segment of a Britain populated from time immemorial by Celts, Picts, Angles, Saxons and other migrants to come.  Legend has it that he was defeated by the Romans, making his last stand on a hill now known as the Herefordshire Beacon. It’s a spectacular spot, commanding a panoramic view over the Malvern Hills. Ancient fortifications can still be seen on its summit.  In 1898, the British Empire was at its peak, so Caractacus could be remodelled as a symbol of pride.  Basking in the certainties of their manifest destiny, Victorian Imperialists didn’t register the irony that they were themselves doing to others what the Roman Imperialists did to their ancestors. In the last big chorus, Elgar’s text specifically mentions “the flag of Britain (and) its triple crosses entwined”, ie the Union Flag which didn’t exist until Stuart times, and British dominion “O’er peoples undiscover’d, inlands we cannot know”. In Elgar's Caractacus, history co-exists with the present of Elgar’s own time. “Watchmen alert!” sing the massed choir. 

Nonetheless, Elgar’s music is much more than bellicose jingoism, overcoming the often lugubrious text. He was a Worcester man at heart, who hiked and cycled in the woods around him. Caractacus is very much inspired by the spirit of the landscape around him in the Malverns. The text may be violent, but the music is gloriously pastoral for the most part. The “Woodland Interlude” that begins Scene III is short, but its verdant loveliness pervades the entire work. The Druids worshipped the forces of nature. Dense woodlands were sacred to them just as Worcester Cathedral is to the modern faithful. For Elgar, nature and landscape were almost sacred too. He wrote to a friend (who appears encoded in the Enigma Variations), “the trees are singing my music- or have I sung theirs?” “The air is sweet, the sky is calm” sings Caractacus, “all nature round is breathing balm…O spirits of the hill surround, with waving wings this holy ground”. Elgar’s forte is the orchestral extension of text, so performance stands or falls on orchestra and conductor.

Caractacus works well on purely musical terms, the surging sweep in the orchestral line taken up by the chorus and soloists. Brabbins delineates the various leitmotifs, so evocatively that the music seems to come alive, whispering invisible meaning much in the way that the Druids believed trees whispered meaning to them.  Tight dynamics build drama into what might otherwise be fairly stolid  melodrama, the recurring themes clearly defined so they give coherence. The theme behind the phrase "Go forth, O King, to conquer" suggests the confidence of the late Victorian era which Elgar could capture so well.  In the section The Spirit of the Hill  ("Rest, weary monarch.... the night is falling fast away,") the hush of the chorus suggests trees in a forest, from which the Arch Druid  (Christopher Purves) will lead the chorus,  discreet orchestral colours illuminating the dark, before the vigorous rhythms of "Leap, leap to light, my brand of light!" (Caractacus, Roland Wood.).  As Caractacus sets forth, the music surges with grandeur, creating contrast with the Woodland Interlude.Eigen (Elizabeth Llewellyn) and Orbin (Elgan Llŷr Thomas) represent youth and renewal, hence the pastoral delicacy in the orchestration around them. Yet the expansive theme invades Orbin's lines "A warrior, now, for Britain's weal".  He, too, is off to battle.  In brief respite, Eigen and her maidens contemplate the Malverh Hills before the return of Caractacus. "O my warriors ". Now the depth in Wood's deep baritone suggest resolution, despite defeat.

As the captives embark on the Severn, figures in the orchestra suggest at once the flow of the river and a slow funeral march, which morphs into the Processional Music as the captives enter Rome, its might suggested by vaguely "oriental" percussion and relentlessly pounding figures, so powerfully delineated by Brabbins that the chorius seems whipped into frenzy (for they are Romans, after all). The lines of Claudius (Alastair Miles) are more measured, low woodwinds underlining the authority in the voice.  The depth in Roland Wood's baritone approaches Miles's bass : an interesting detail which emphasizes the idea that both men are equals.  Quixotically, defeat becomes triumph.  "All the nations shall stand and hymn the praise of Britain, like brothers, hand in hand !"  Elgar's Caractacus is neither historic truth, nor logic, but it is rousing music.

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 ? 

Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony - Martyn Brabbins BBCSO

From Hyperion, an excellent new Ralph Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus,  Elizabeth Llewellyn and Marcus Farnsworth soloists. This follows on from Brabbins’s highly acclaimed Vaughan Williams Symphony no 2 "London" in the rarely heard 1920 version. Although Brabbins has not hitherto recorded much Vaughan Williams, he is a superlative conductor of British music and of 20th century British music in particular, so the prospect of a new Hyperion series with Brabbins is intriguing.

The brass fanfare sparkles, strong and bright, rather than brassy,  introducing the first line "Behold, the Sea! ". In many ways,  this symphony is a secular hymn to the sea and what it might represent, so the voice parts are integral to meaning. For a moment the orchestra sings on its own but the voices rise upon the crest, chorus and orchestra surging forwards together. A roll of timpani, and again the anthem "Behold the Sea!" repeated wave after wave.  The tide fades, introducing a new theme highlighted by rhythms that suggest shanty song. Hence the interplay between the first soloist and the chorus, "a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge".  This call and response relationship also suggests sacred song.  The flags flying here include a special one "for the soul of man"......a spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates". Though the influence of Debussy and Ravel is significant, the Sea Symphony is very much part of the English choral tradition, albeit in very sophisticated form.  After a brief lull, the music surges forth again, underlined by organ. The baritone returns, singing of the "pennant universal", the chorus and soprano repeating the words in concurrence.  Then, as so often in chorale,  the first verse returns, the soprano at first on her own, the theme elaborated by the baritone, chorus and orchestra together.

The second movement is introduced by mysterious low harmonies, setting the mood "On the beach at night alone".  Here, the organ is particularly resonant, the brass and low timbred winds calling out as if in hymnal.  At first the baritone is alone, but gradually joined by small than full chorus.  "All nations, all identities......This vast similitude spans them".  The voices and orchestra repeat the themes, like waves, rising and falling in volume and force.  Beautifully judged orchestral playing, the solo instruments heard clearly, before blending back into the whole, rather like stars in a night sky.   The fanfare in the scherzo movement was more tumultuous than the fanfare at the very start, for it describes the churning of waves "in the wake of the sea-ship after she passes" - wild but not "motley" given the precise definition in the music, which Brabbins kept sharply focused.

If A Sea Symphony is a journey. it is one which proceeds, like many journeys, looking backwards at turns, but ever forward.  Hence the final movement, titled The Explorers, where the ship appears to be taking off into unknown territory.  The scherzo movement operated like a Dies Irae, a monent of judgement clearing the way for a more esoteric future. "After the seas are all cross'd, ........The true son of God shall come singing his songs."  The mood is now altogether more esoteric, the first verse serene yet expansive with long lines that seem to stretch  and search. Shimmering strings echo the voices of the chorus, then joined by brass and winds, and later organ, repeat the harmonies.  After this long choral section, the symphony reaches a new stage. Farnsworth and Llewellyn lead the way ahead "fearlessfor unknown   shores on waves of ecstasy to sail". The solo violin defines yet another stage, with an element of peaceful bliss. Thus we are prepared for the section "O thou transcendent". Farnsworth's voice glows, the relative lightness of his baritone well suited to the luminous imagery in the text. In the finale, the energy and exuberance of the first movemen returns, invigorated "Away ! Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!"  Llewelyn rallies the chorus and the orchestra surges yet again. Sea shanty rhythms are heard again as the "ship" sets forth. The motif "Behold the Sea" is reprised before the very last section, but as the "ship" sails out of sight, silence gradually descends, as if some form of transcendence is achieved.  Brabbins's instinct for structure, honed from years of experience in modern music, pays off handsomely in this last movement, which unfolds with great coherence.  This A Sea Symphony feels like the herald of a new age, as indeed it was, connecting also to other 20th century music of spiritual yearning. 

As a bonus, this recording includes Darest thou now, O soul, a three minute miniature for unison voices and string orchestra, (a hymn with orchestra !) using the same Walt Whitman text which Vaughan Williams used in Towards the Unknown Region.  It is an excellent choice, complementing A Sea Symphony not only in terms of poetic ideas but also taking up the violin line near the end of the symphony.

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

London Sinfonietta Landmarks - Birtwistle Xenakis Matthews Rihm

Silbury Hill collage, from London Sinfonietta

 A great London Sinfonietta experience with Martyn Brabbins conducting Xenakis, Birtwistle, Wolfgang Rihm and Colin Matthews at St John's, Smith Square.  As the London Sinfonietta nears its 50th anniversary, it’s good to hear them presenting landmarks from their core repertoire.  Good music is always "Unfinished Business", revealing  more with each experience. Governments want to divest themselves of responsibility for education, forcing orchestras to change their focus. But excellence "is" education, and education doesn't just mean people who wouldn't normally listen to music.  Hopefully the London Sinfonietta will return to its pioneering roots and be proud of what they do.
Harrison Birtwistle's Silbury Air ( 1977/2003) is a case in point.  It's one of the great classics of the repertoire, inspired by Silbury Hill, a neolithic mound rising steeply above the flat plains of Wiltshire. In foggy conditions, it looms above the mist as if it were a strange alien entity.  It connects to other prehistoric land forms in the area, such as Avebury, Long Barrow and Stonehenge.  Building these  monuments may have taken millennia, constructed as they were without modern tools. Yet no-one knows who built them, or why.  "Unfinished Business", mysteries we may never solve.  Silbury Air is an evocation in musical form of many ideas Birtwistle has been developing over many years: layers of sound like geological strata, cells growing organically into denser blocks,  always moving.  Tiny percussive fragments (including harp and piano - Rolf Hind)  grew into a long seamless drone, with oboe, B flat clarinet and trombone.  Flurries of notes, building up patterns.  Temple blocks and metallic brass : lines swaying in characteristic Birtwistle waywardness.  Could we hear neolithic workmen hammering away ? And echoes of The Rite of Spring ? Textures thinned out : high strings and winds, surprisingly subdued, mysterious brass chords, percussion in various forms beating time.  Ticking sounds, too  - the passage of time - an elusive flute theme rising above.  Single harp chords. Hard to tell when sound merged into silence, but that, I think, is the point.

Organic growth, too, in Iannis Xenakis Thalleïn (1984)  The title means "sprouting"  Thus the sudden but sustained chord, exploding like a siren, high-pitched sounds rising upwards, rhythmic cells bubbling along. An exotic glissando that decelerated before rising up again - a tendril, unfurling and swaying. Further loops of sound (winds and brass), sparkling flurries and single notes plucked on piano and percussion.  The music moves through several distinct phases, ideas carried through and developed anew.  Dense textures alternated with stark staccato, evolving into florid glissando multitudes.  Percussion chords anchored wildly rhythmic figures.  Single chords along the keyboard danced with drums and strings.   Long wailing brass and  single chord percussion. The "siren" opening returned, in new form, with a strong brass line. Xenakis creates shapes with sound, shapes so inventive that they could be depicted in visual form.

As I listened to Xenakis, I thought of Boulez's many Notations,  reconfiguring and growing like a Mandelbrot, the very essence of life.  So it was good to hear Colin Matthews’ Contraflow (1992)  after Xenakis Thalleïn. Again, the idea of shapes spiralling and unfolding, with joyous proliferation.  It's "contraflow" in the sense of two forces meeting and merging. Colin Matthews is a major figure in British new music and very much a part of the London Sinfonietta heritage.

Since this concert was a sampler programme, we didn't get to hear the whole of Wolfgang Rihm's Chiffre-Zyklus (1982-6), which evolved from Chiffre I through a series of different instrumental groupings to form a traverse, though each section can be played individually.  Here, though, we heard Chiffres II (of X) subtitled "Silence to be Beaten" (1983). From near silence, a strident chord which breaks into zig zags, movement further propelled by rushing rhythms, capricious figures for winds and brass, alternating by piano beating time like a metronome.  Energetic blocks of sound which suddenly disappear into near-silence.  High-pitched sound, interrupted by thwacks of timpani. Further near silence, rumbling percussion, tense single keys crackling across the keyboard. The climax builds up in waves of varied detail.  A marching pace, led by brass calls. Gradually, the textures open out again: sighing winds, single notes on the piano, and silence returns.  What a ride!      

Howard Skempton - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner NMC Roderick Williams

Another hit for NMC, specialists in modern British music: Howard Skempton The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with Roderick Williams and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. This recording breaks new ground, its appeal reaching beyond  new-music circles.

Samuel Taylor  Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner intrigues because there's nothing else quite like it in English verse. Though its tone suggests ancient saga, its subject was unequivocally modern, in the sense that it caught the Zeitgeist of the Romantic era's fascination with the "Gothic". The Mariner breaks unspoken  rules and kills the Albatross. He and his shipmates are cursed, dying of thirst though there's "water, water everywhere" around them.  Two centuries later, the Rime still haunts. The Mariner's journey is a descent into the darker unconscious. Like the wedding guest, we "fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand!"

Howard Skempton's setting grows from the ballad so symbiotically it seems a "living thing". The vocal part reflects the strange obsessive nature of the text, which draws the listener in as if hypnotized.  The cadences rise upwards and down, at a pace which suggests a hard march. Coleridge began the poem while hiking on the moors.  Roderick Williams is a remarkable narrator, capturing the demented undercurrents in the verse. The lines run like a form of Sprechstimme, not recitation, yet not quite singing. This nightmare does not let a voice take full flight. Williams has a gift for natural, direct communication, without theatrical histrionics. He makes us sympathetic to the Mariner as a mortal man, which makes his fate all the more tragic.

The voice is accompanied at first only by the cello, legato drawn drone-like, as if it were some ancient, primitive instrument, or, indeed, a force of nature, like a sinister wail.  The cello carries the music for a while, until other voices join in in subtle combinations. The double bass quietly murmurs, suggesting sinister depths.  The viola leads the violins, an aptly quirky reverse of "natural order". When the ship is becalmed -- "As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean" -- the music hovers almost imperceptibly, as if listening out for a breeze. When things change, the piano and other players create a tumult.  When the visionary figures appear, the high violins at last take flight.  Coleridge  writes movement into his lines, which Skempton translates into abstract sound.  We listen, as if spellbound, to the strange, unworldly atmosphere.  Maurice and Sheila Millward, who suggested the setting and commissioned the piece, had insight. Skempton's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a remarkable work which needs to become part of the canon of British music.

Like an earworm, this music burrows into your subconciousness.  The cadences in the text haunt the music, reflecting, perhaps, the tides of the ocean, and the pulse of the human body.  You're mesmerized, absorbing the surreal atmosphere so it seems almost natural. Though you're hypnotized, almost against your will, you keep listening, fascinated by the detail and inventiveness concealed within the relentless pulse.  The wedding guest must have felt the same way! It's a tribute to Skempton's skill that his music adds greatly to the effect of the poetry, enhancing its effects without overwhelming its strange personality.


On this disc, Skempton's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is paired with Only the Sound Remains, taking as a starting point an idea from Edward Thomas's The Mill Water.   The mill is gone, and its sounds have fallen still.  Yet "In calm moonlight, Gloom infinite, The sound comes surging in upon the sense:".  Thus there's no need here for a voice part: the orchestral sounds evoke the sounds that once might have been heard, though the men and machines who made them are now long gone.  John Fallas's booklet notes for NMC explain further. "Skempton's pervasive but pervasively disguised/transformed nine-note scales are the secret code generating everything, from the spare, angular counterpoint into dramatic minor chords or sudden outbreaks of warm, major key consonance". The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in particular is a tour de force, not at all easy to perform, so treasure this recording. It will become a classic.

Enigma : Cecil Coles, Martyn Brabbins BBC SSO

Three premieres of sorts of works by composers who have been dead for a hundred years?  Intriguing. Martyn Brabbins conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in  George Butterworth's Orchestral Fantasia and Cecil Coles Behind the Lines and Sorrowful Dance (broadcast available on BBC Radio 3 here).

The anniversary of the First World War generates interest in composers of the period.  British war poets like Wilfred Owen,  Siegfried Sassoon,  Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg  and Rupert Brooke are justly celebrated, even part of the basic school curriculum. But what of British composers of the period?  Ralph Vaughan Williams, being rather older the "Lost Generation",  survived but many others didn't. How might British music have developed  if Butterworth, Gurney, W Denis Browne (read more here) and others even more forgotten, had lived to fulfil their potential?  Understandably we'ree intrigued.

Gurney at least left enough material that some of his music can be reasonably reconstructed. Gurney's War Elegy, for example, is a  significant work that deserves a place in the mainstream repertoire.  Read about the Proms premiere of Gurney's War Elegy HERE and the background behind it HERE.  

Gurney reconstructions are largely built on the composer's original material.  Not so, though, some of the other reconstructions around.  Butterworth's Orchestral Fantasia exists as a 92-bar fragment. A short score may exist, but all that is currently known is a rough manuscript with crossings out and amendments.   Michael Barlow, in his seminal biography of the composer Whom the Gods Love suggests that Butterworth might, in 1914, have been on the cusp of a change in style "with not a few influences from European composers".  Vaughan Williams's music was utterly transformed by his contact with Ravel, and indeed to some extent by Butterworth himself, who spurred RVW to write his Symphony no 2 "London".

Barlow mentions that, while Butterworth was an undergraduate at Oxford a don remarked: "There goes more Red Revolution than in all Russia"   Butterworth is a mystery. Why did he burn his unpublished music? Why did he so cherish the male bonding camaraderie of the trenches? Why did he die the way he did, by throwing himself into the line of fire?  We shall never know.  Barlow also describes the fragment of the Orchestral Fantasia thus  "A hushed, dark-coloured opening, on bassoons and divided violas and cellos, leads to an andantino section in which one basic theme, first heard on oboe and violas, is developed, but the score is too fragmentary for constructive comment. A vivace section of only a few bars includes a promising figure on trumpets, but there the music stops".  

Since there is so little to go on, any "completion" can be little more than conjecture. Kriss Russman's version extends the basic core, described by Barlow above, with references to other music by Butterworth, rather more a suite than what Butterworth might have written. Since there isn't all that much true Butterworth around, we recognize fragments and start to think of those other works, (much of it piano song)  rather than the fragment itself. Like the orchestration of A Shropshire Lad heard at last year's Proms, without much point, though enjoyable enough.

Cecil Coles  (1888-1918) , was three years younger than Butterworth, yet already more European in focus. He had lived in Germany, where he was assistant conductor at Stuttgart Opera. This threw him right into the fertile creative ferment of those times, not only in music but in literature, art, theatre  and film.  He knew Richard Strauss and must have heard Elektra.  Perhaps he even knew of Rudi Stephan (1887-1915), whose orchestral music is truly innovative, and whose opera Die ersten Menschen would shock audiences when it was finally premiered after Stephan was killed on the Eastern Front. 
What might have become of Coles had he survived? The question is even more intriguing than for Butterworth, for Coles's music is  so distinctive and so individual that it doesn'tb really  fit  into conventional British music stereotypes. This may account for why he was largely forgotten until Martyn Brabbins recorded Coles's music for Hyperion in 2002.  Both Before the Lines and Sorrowful Dance appear on this CD. It's significant that Coles's other great admirer was Gustav Holst.

Coles's Behind the Lines  was written in four movements of which only the first and last survive, Estaminet du Carrefour and Cortège. The second and third movements were titled The Wayside Shrine and Rumours, which may give some indication of the scale of its construction.  So much is made of the role of folksong in British music that it's refreshing to hear how Coles adapts the vibrant sounds of a French drinking establishment into the first movement. It's vibrant with a pungent Gallic twist, sensual and uninhibited, Coles must have known the music of Ravel and Debussy: this is far from genteel pastoralism even when that pastoralism describes earthy peasants.  Coles  defines the harmonic line firmly, which takes off with athletic energy.  These are reels, fast dances which swirl round capriciously. It feels almost dangerously wild.  With a flourish, a more assured line emerges, taken up by the brass, which gives even firmer definition to a wall of sound, cymbals riding on its crest .  Cortège. too, is more than a straightforward funeral march.  No maudlin sentimentality here.  Behind the Lines deals with the experience of war, but it's clear sighted and strong,  even quite gracious. 

Coles began Sorrowful Dance for his wife, while on R&R in Southampton. It is a dance, moving with thoughtful deliberation.  It's melancholy yet positive, since a brighter theme  emerges, again firmly defined. Perhaps Coles's wife could take comfort. The circular dance theme returns, as gentle as an embrace.  

And so Brabbins and the BBC SSO ended their Glasgow concert with Elgar Enigma Variations. What do we really know about what went into these 13 vignettes? We can guess but can never be sure. An appropriate end to a concert that featured What Might Have Been.

Tomlinson triumphs - Harrison Birtwistle Gawain Barbican

John Tomlinson stole the show in Harrison Birtwistle's Gawain, at the Barbican, London. In  the Salzburg production last year, he wore a green slime costume (pictured at right) but this semi staging might have been even more impressive. We could see Tomlinson's every expression, and  relate to him not only as the Green Knight but as an  artist and human being.  His voice roared, growling with menace and portent: yet when he raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide, one could glimpse a strangely refined sensibility. "Who is it", this Green Knight, and how did he come to be? What are the more esoteric connections between the Green Knight and Gawain? Who is Sir Bertilak? Does he belong to Arthur's Court (since his wife hangs out there) or is he supernatural? How does he connect to the Green Knight, his next door neighbour in the forest?  And where is Gawain heading when he takes the First Step on his next journey?  All provocative questions, which can't be answered but must be asked - a choice that's "no choice". Everything connects, as in a tightly wrought  puzzle,  Tomlinson's insights into Birtwistle's world are unique: we're fortunate that the music will suit his voice long after he retires from other parts. Tomlinson's Green Knight is even more commanding now than it was 20 years ago. Those tricky long passages up and down the scale are difficult to sing, but are now enhanced by an overlay of Weltschmerz, that's quite endearing.

Like most people,  I learned Gawain from the old Elgar Howarth/Royal Opera House Orchestra recording from 1994, just re-issued by NMC Records (review here). Howarth is good - he premiered many Birtwistle operas , but Martyn Brabbins with the BBC SO are  even better. The complex layers and textures in Birtwistle's music shone, details illuminated to show their place in the whole, The  pace was electrifying, pulling inexorably forward, despite the murmurs of overwhelming doom. This conflict between opposing forces  reflects Bitwistles idiom - circular forms, ritualized processsions and progressions from which there's no escape. Gawain is hypnotized. Orchestra and voices are closely integrated. Morgan le Fay's lullaby is picked up first by the harp, its strings held tightly so when plucked it sounds like a manic lute, such as Orpheus might have strummed.  Brass and strings scream with clarity so intense that they might be expressing what the singers dare not articulate. The Turning of the Seasons has a stylized rhythm, like the rhythm of time, but Brabbins and the BBCSO  make it grandly processional. Hidden from view the BBC Singers sang the choruses, the sound beamed round the auditorium by Sounds Intemedia: a wonderfully theatrical effect,. Later, as Gawain returns tom the "real" world a quartet of flutes herald, a parody of trumpets, but also perhaps a reference to the Spring that is to come. Ingo Metzmacher conducted in Salzburg, Brabbins and Metzmacher are both specialists in contemporary music, so they can create Birtwistle's audacious blend of violence and - dare I say it - Romantic intrigue.

Leigh Melrose sang Gawain. Much as I love Francois le Roux, Melrose is  far more persuasive. Gawain starts out naive, so a bright, light timbre works fine for a while. On his journey to the Green Chapel, Gawain matures. Melrose's voice becomes more assertive. Indeed, he reveals Gawain as a younger version of the Green Knight himself. It isn't just that their music connects, but Melrose intuits the steel in Gawain's personality. He does't need religious incantations or magic armour. He's begun to find himself, while for Arthur and his Court, nothing has changed. "How will I live in this tyranny of virtue" sang Melrose with such resolve that you sense what he means by "I am the sudden guest, unwanted, raw, as winter weather, bringing news no-one wants to hear". Melrose isn't a bass so he can't sing The Green Knight, a tour de forces of the lower register, but he makes Gawain feel like a hero in that mould. (the photo shows Christopher Maltman in Salzburg).

Laura Aikin's Morgan Le Fay was more complex and subtle than Marie Angel for Howarth in 1994. There's a point to the shrillness Angel produced, as Morgan le Fay is dangerous. But she's not evil. Aikin brings out the sensuality in the part, suggesting that Morgan le Fay is an Earth spirit, a female version of the Green Knight.  Her lullaby was sweet and perverse, but sincere - how hard it must be to sing those ululations!  Perhaps Bishop Baldwin, chanting in Latin is a lesser, earth-bound copy, lulling peoiple to sleep with words they can't understand. William Towers, greatly underrated, sang the Bishop  far better than one would expect, given the limitations of the part. He's a counter tenor with a delicuously masculine bite to his voice, suggesting demons hidden behind angelic sounds.

Jennifer Johnston sang Lady de Hautdesert, as she did in Salzburg. Her rich mezzo colours the part so it feels both comfortinga nd seductive - all the more reason to respect Gawain for not giving in! Good balance between her voice and Aikin's. In their dialogues, their voices entwined, suggesting the dense undergrowth of a forest, where vines overlap each other, forming an impenetrable thicket. I closed my eyes better to listen to the way their voices overlapped. Did I see their eyes smile? I wasn't sleeping, just trapped in the wonders of their music.

Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts sang King Arthur, nice and solid. John Graham-Hall sang A Fool, bringing out the wisdom behind the mania. Rachel Nicholls sang Guinevere, Ivan Ludlow sang Agravain  and Robert Anthony Gardiner sang Ywain. How delicious those names are, a reminder of Birtwistle's zest for word play

John Lloyd Davies's semi staging was dramatic and to the point. No need for too much literalism. Gawain is myth, not history. The people sitting near John  Tomlinson when he went "hunting" as Bertilak must have had fun as he leaned off the stage, wielding his axe at them.

Top photo of John Tomlinson : BBC/Mark Allan, courtesy Barbican Centre

Lots more on this site about Birtwistle - more than anywhere else . Please explore.

Brabbins LSO Barbican Elgar Third Anthony Payne

Colin Davis should have been conducting his 85th birthday concert with The London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, but he was taken ill . "I hope to be home soon", he said in a message read out to the audience. In the circumstances any disappointment must be moderated by good wishes for his recovery - and the health of Mitsuko Uchida, the scheduled soloist who also had to cancel. These things happen, and I wish them well.

The good news was that Martyn Brabbins stood in. Brabbins is a fixture on the British conductor circuit, extremely well respected.  His technical foundations are rock solid, yet he's adventurous and free spirited. Once I bumped into him when he was wearing ghoul makeup for David Sawers' Rumpelstiltskin (more here). Huge grin! Brabbins' range is eclectic, but he specializes in 20th century British music.  So it was good to hear him conduct Anthony Payne's elaboration of the materials which might have led to Elgar's Third Symphony.

Payne's Elgar isn't a "completion" but rather the result of Payne's engagement with Elgar and his mental processes. "I had to 'think Elgar'", he has said. There's a whole book on the experience Payne went through. The Elgar fragments are developed both as an extension of Elgar's ideas and as the response of a British composer writing with 70 years of further experience into the world Elgar left.  It's "not" Elgar, though there's enough to tantalise. The "summer" themes, for example, evoke many Elgarian ideas.  Payne stimulates us to think about Elgar in the light of our own responses to the composer. It's an extremely creative approach, which makes us reflect on how we respond to any music.

Brabbins' approach to Payne/Elgar is vivaciously energetic, which might not suit those who like their Elgar staid. But that in iteself is an insight. Brabbins negotiates the changes of perspective briskly, bringing out a very strong sense of dialogue, which, for me, is the secret of the piece: Payne's reflections on Elgar show how understanding is shaped by our own insights. With the LSO, Brabbins creates a vivid sense of Payne coming so close to Elgar's mind that he's doing a lot more than just dollying up bits of Elgar. This performance was much livelier than Brabbins'  account at the BBC Proms eight years ago. That shows how Brabbins himself keeps developing and hearing things afresh. Sakari Oramo's CBSO performance in 2007 was excellent,  but Brabbins' sense of Payne's personality gave this latest interpretation a distinct edge. Payne identified so closely with Elgar that he effaced himself, but Brabbins brings out the warmth and inventive spirit of Payne as well as of Elgar.

It was a greater tribute to Colin Davis to hear Brabbins, one of the leading exponents of Payne/Elgar, conduct because it was a reminder that, while we grow old, music lives on. The continuum doesn't break. Richard Strauss Vier letzte Lieder as Birthday Tribute was a much more questionable choice,  given that Strauss was contemplating death. Sally Matthews sang with obvious sincerity, but sacrificed articulation in the process. The pace dragged, self conscious and dirge-like. "Beim Schlafengehn" walked in its sleep. In the circumstances, Colin Davis might be more cheered by a more idiomatic  performance.

Gordan Nikolitch directed Mozart's Symphony no 35 D moll The "Haffner". This is a piece that depends on good ensemble and a good leader. Normally we wouldn't even notice there's no conductor. It's not a reflection on the LSO, who were fine, but this time the absence was poignant.

Happy Wanderers : Three Choirs Dyson Canterbury Pilgrims

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

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

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

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

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

Hymnus Paradisi Howells Elgar Brabbins Prom 61

Herbert Howells Hymnus Paradisi is not a rarity. Indeed, it's considered by some to be his masterpiece, extremely well known to those interested in British choral tradition. Sowhat if it's new to the Proms?  Several recordings exist, Vernon Handley, David Hill, David Willcox and my personal favourite, Richard Hickox. So it's fitting that it was included in this Proms season with its sucession of spectacular choral extravangazas. Martyn Brabbins is a great champion of British music, but with huge experience of more contemporary music.  Brabbins conducted Howells and Elgar's Symphony No 1 with a fresh new perspective.

Hymnus Paradisi is an amalgam of private grief, public celebration and art for its own sake. Howell's only son Michael died suddenly, aged only 9. Any parent would be devastated: no one ever "gets over" such events. Howells worked through his grief with music. Hymnus Paradisi is no less than a rumination on the meaning of life and loss. As a young man, Howells was so sickly that he nearly died, and couldn't serve in the First World War, while so many of his healthy friends were killed or damaged.  The irony was not lost on him. When Howells wrote Hymnus Paradisi, he wasn't to know he'd live til 1983, but he knew his friend Ivor Gurney was incarcerated in a mental hospital, far from his beloved Gloucestershire hills.

Unlike so many Requiems and memorial pieces, Hymnus Paradisi is deeply felt and deeply personal. Although Howells is writing for big orchestra and choir, the last thing you want in performance is insincerity. Brabbins's approach emphasizes the luminous qualities in this music: high, bright textures, always ascending, refusing to wallow in self indulgence. How quietly this Preludio began, suggesting, perhaps, lost innocence. Yet already, sudden, shining chords break through. The choirs enter in hushed tones, without breaking the reverie. Only when the soloist, Miah Persson, sings, do the choirs begin to reach greater volume. The organ enters, reminding us of the force of suffering. It's interesting how Howells works the different phrases in The Lord is my Shepherd, so they aren't full blast unison, maximizing instead the poignancy of the solo soprano line "I will lift up miine eyes". Quietly, the tenor (Andrew Kennedy) repeats "The Lord is my Shepherd". Parallel songs, parallel prayers, parallel lives. This interweaving is crucial, I think, to the meaning of the work, for it emphasizes the idea that those gone are neither alone nor lost. Only then do the choirs (BBC Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir) and the BBC SO reach full crescendo.

"I heard a voice from Heaven" sings Kennedy, alone. Again the interplay of voices is critical, for in a burial service, one person takes leave from those around him and  goes out on their own. But as Howells shows it's a journey into glorious eternal light. "Wonderful, wonderful" is the holy light which receives those who die, and offers comfort to those who believe. "Alleluja!". Hymnus Paradisi ends in a glowing halo. Eternal rest, eternal bliss.

I used to do an annual pilgrimage to Chosen Hill, where Ivor Gurney would stride ahead, Howells behind him, and then visit nearby Twigworth where Howells, Gurney and Michael are buried together. Photo by Jeffrey Carter (link here)  Arguably, Gurney was  by far the greater and more original composer (and poet), and I suspect Howells knew so too, which  makes Hymnus Paradisi so moving.  I loved Brabbins's Elgar First Symphony, tightly structured and lucid, but was so wiped out emotionally by his Howells that I had to listen again to the broadcast to appreciate how well Brabbins conducts Elgar.

Havergal Brian Gothic Prom - new review

Here is a link to a more analytical review of Havergal Brian's Symphony no 1 "The Gothic" BBC Prom 4 at the Royal Albert Hall.  Wonderful theatre, though that's probably thanks to the BBC rather than to the composer. Musically, it's a strange beast, ".....an accumulation whose object is to amass as many pieces as possible — not a jigsaw, for the ideas don’t really cohere."  Brian was a self-taught loner who didn't really think in terms of performance or performability.  On paper the ideas may look good, they don't develop or connect. Maybe amateur and uncrafted has appeal, but you do wonder why music so fervently promoted  is otherwise known only through poor performances and on deleted recordings. Maybe that's part of the cachet. Brian is part of the grand British Eccentric Tradition.  But there is so much else waiting to be discovered that one hopes attention will move to music with innate musical value.  Please also see this analysis, from someone with experience of turning paper into music.

"Feel the width" Havergal Brian Gothic at the Proms

If ever there was a performance that could make Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony work, Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Proms (Prom 4) pulled off the most amazing performance imaginable. This was total, extravagant theatre, an event to be remembered for decades to come. "And we were there!" someone said reverentially. "Pity about the music".

One third of the massive Royal Albert Hall was taken over by the sheer number of performers. Nine choirs, no less, visually stunning on their own, especially the ones in lavender gowns. Two main orchestras. Two timpani orchestras (not symphony orchestras). The choristers sitting beside them might be still deaf the next day. And of course, like a Colossus, the mighty Royal Albert Hall Willis organ with its 9997 pipes and 149 stops, the second biggest in the world, wonderfully spotlit.

Martyn Brabbins deserves a medal.  He's braved the dense jungle of this score like a fearless explorer mapping unknown terrirtory. As he journeys through this humungous traverse, he focuses on the many brief moments which give it interest, a flurry of harps, for example, like flowers blooming in forest clearings.  Better still, he brings out the way the symphony is built from multiple separate units rather like an intricate puzzle. Within the main orchestra there are various sub groups like the group of winds, but in no apparent relation to the whole. At first, the timpani orchestras play together, so there's an acoustic logic, but later one falls silent.  On paper, the ideas may look good, but they don't cohere in practical performance. The symphony feels like it's been constructed like an elaborate theoretical puzzle, the object of which is to fit in as many features as possible.

Brian's Gothic has been compared to Mahler's Eighth Symphony, on the basis that the latter was marketed as the "symphony of a thousand", but the comparison is nonsense. The label was a PR ruse. Mahler's focus was on spiritual meaning. Although Mahler's structure is unorthodox, there's a powerful trajectory that pulls it forward. Brian's symphony is perhaps called the Gothic because it's a construction, like a cathedral built by many people over different periods. But is it a cathedral built without purpose? For example, in the final movement, the Te ergo quaesumus, Alastair Miles intones lines that waver upwards and down, perhaps in homage to Orthodox plainchant, but the orchestra's playing a parody of jazz swing. Sometimes contrasts have reason, but in this symphony they seem to exist for variety's sake. The one truly sublime moment is when Susan Gritton sings Judex crederis esse venturus from way up in the rafters. Magnificent singing, magnificently theatrical. But the rest of the movement consists of that 4-word sentence alone, and it's quickly dispensed with in favour of meaningless extended vocalise.

Perhaps comparison with Stockhausen would be more telling. Martyn Brabbins was one of the three conductors who made sense of Gruppen at the Proms in 2008. Please read this link, which discusses the way Stockhausen used sonic space to create awesome wonder. Obviously Brian writing in the 1920's couldn't conceive of such concepts, but the effects he uses are theatrical, whether or not he was aware of thier impact in real performance.

This BBC Prom performance is a watershed in Havergal Brian reception, because it's the biggest exposure Brian has ever had.  He's always been known better by reputation than by actual experience, which adds to the cachet of exclusivity. Performances are rare, and the recordings are poor, some churned out by the equivalent of jobbing bands. Good performance is essential if any composer is to get the recognition he's due. Novelty status is not enough. John Foulds's Requiem bombed at its much-heralded performance in 2007, also at the Royal Albert Hall, thanks to lugubrious conducting (Leon Botstein). Last year, Foulds's music was heard again at the BBC Proms with far better results.

I enjoyed this performance a lot because it was such a theatrical experience. Brabbins and his musicians all deserve credit. But so, too, the logistic whizzes who made it possible at all. It must have been like moving an army. Brian's Gothic is a strange Leviathan, whose sheer enormity attracts interest. There always will be audiences that "don't mind the quality" as long as they can "feel the width".

Hopefully, Brabbins's Proms performance of Brian's Gothic will be recorded ,if only to recoup the enormous costs. It's a superlative way into the symphony particularly as so little of this music is available. Fortunately, the Havergal Brian Society website is so comprehensive that now everyone can become familiar with his work even if they haven't heard it.
A more detailed and formal review is here in Opera Today