To round out March, here's a post about a rather unusual British composer. John Ireland developed along very different lines from some of the other British musicians I love, but his music is still both pleasant and thoughtful -- well worth anyone's time. The key difference is that Ireland was greatly attracted to the music of the French Impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel, and therefore managed to create a kind of English equivalent of the style. The closest English equivalent is probably in the Pastoral Symphony (# 3) by Vaughan Williams, which remained unique in its creator's output.
John Lenehan has recorded several discs of Ireland's piano output, central to his list of compositions, on the Naxos label, and I'm looking forward to sampling them. The recording at hand is another one, featuring Ireland's music for piano and orchestra. The key work is the Piano Concerto, followed by a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra entitled simply Legend. Both works are rhapsodic in style, rather than following the kind of cogent structural thinking of the German symphonic tradition. The Concerto is the more lively piece, while Legend is dark, brooding, and full of dramatic intensity.
The next major work is the First Rhapsody, a large-scale early piece which echoes the big piano sound and structure of Brahms and Liszt. Then come a series of smaller characteristic pieces for piano, a genre which Ireland made his own. The early composition entitled Pastoral suggests exactly the atmosphere which the name evokes. A later piece, Indian Summer, breathes the same air. A three-movement suite for piano entitled A Sea Idyll, and a collection of Three Dances round out this musical portrait of a unique composer. All are played with exemplary care and insight by John Lenehan and the recorded sound is very truthful. In the concertante works he is joined by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by John Wilson.
Every lover of good piano music should investigate this album, and then perhaps go on (as I am going on) to dig into some of Lenehan's other Ireland releases in this Naxos series.
Saturday 31 March 2012
Thursday 29 March 2012
Intense Tragedy in Miniature
Today, a look at one of my favourite operas -- a heart-rending tragedy that lasts for all of 35 minutes, but in that short time encompasses generation after generation of deep sorrow. And it's by one of my favourite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Riders to the Sea is a short one-act play by John Millington Synge, set in the remote Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. The weather-beaten fisher folk of these island communities have always lived a difficult and dangerous life. In the play, Maurya is the central character: a woman who has lost her husband, her husband's father, and five of her six sons to the sea. She strives in vain to stop her youngest son, Bartley, from taking the horses onto the boat into Galway so he can sell them. He ignores her, and leaves. Maurya has a premonitory vision that warns her of Bartley's impending death. Moments later, the men bring his body into the house and lay it out on the table, while Maurya mourns his death.
Vaughan Williams sets all this to expressive music of great power. The score opens and closes with the sound of the sea beating upon the rocks, abetted by a wind machine. Throughout the opera, the sea and the wind are present in the orchestra. Trust RVW to spot the reality that these are, and must be, audible and visible characters, the true antagonists of the drama. Much of the dialogue passes quickly in recitative, especially between Maurya's daughters, who often sing quickly, in hushed voices. When they do burst into melody, the lines soar lyrically in Vaughan Williams' typical manner, yet almost always in the minor key or modal keys. Maurya's music, by contrast, is slow, dark (contralto voice), and world-weary. Bartley arrives as a burst of young energy, yet even with him the minor and modal tones predominate.
One other character must be mentioned. The people of the island are represented by a chorus of women, whose "keening" (specifically mentioned in Synge's play) adds a heart-rending layer of sorrow to the moments when Bartley's body is brought into the cottage.
The final moments, when Maurya's last long speech becomes an aria of indescribable beauty and power, would probably bring tears to anyone's eyes. For the first time, the music moves firmly into the major key. Also, rising melodic lines replace the descending lines used in so much of the music to this point. Her acceptance of her tragic fate becomes a blessing, even a redemption, in this wonderful music. No matter that after her final words, the orchestra bursts out again with the minor-key sounds of wind and sea, as it surely must. It's Maurya's final words of acquiescence -- "No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied" -- that resound in your ear long after the music ends.
Every minute of the opera grips, just as the play does in a fine staging, the music following the innate musicality of the English language as rendered by Irish speakers. RVW spent some time in the Galway region, familiarizing himself with the sounds and rhythms of the voices. Every minute of the score benefits from this extra research effort.
In the 1970s, Meredith Davies recorded the opera for EMI with the incomparable Helen Watts in the role of Maurya. More recently, Richard Hickox recorded it in typically rich sound for Chandos. His Maurya was Linda Finnie, also a wonderful singer. My preference is for Watts and Davies, but by a small margin. Either of these recordings will make a marvellous addition to your music collection.
Riders to the Sea is a short one-act play by John Millington Synge, set in the remote Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. The weather-beaten fisher folk of these island communities have always lived a difficult and dangerous life. In the play, Maurya is the central character: a woman who has lost her husband, her husband's father, and five of her six sons to the sea. She strives in vain to stop her youngest son, Bartley, from taking the horses onto the boat into Galway so he can sell them. He ignores her, and leaves. Maurya has a premonitory vision that warns her of Bartley's impending death. Moments later, the men bring his body into the house and lay it out on the table, while Maurya mourns his death.
Vaughan Williams sets all this to expressive music of great power. The score opens and closes with the sound of the sea beating upon the rocks, abetted by a wind machine. Throughout the opera, the sea and the wind are present in the orchestra. Trust RVW to spot the reality that these are, and must be, audible and visible characters, the true antagonists of the drama. Much of the dialogue passes quickly in recitative, especially between Maurya's daughters, who often sing quickly, in hushed voices. When they do burst into melody, the lines soar lyrically in Vaughan Williams' typical manner, yet almost always in the minor key or modal keys. Maurya's music, by contrast, is slow, dark (contralto voice), and world-weary. Bartley arrives as a burst of young energy, yet even with him the minor and modal tones predominate.
One other character must be mentioned. The people of the island are represented by a chorus of women, whose "keening" (specifically mentioned in Synge's play) adds a heart-rending layer of sorrow to the moments when Bartley's body is brought into the cottage.
The final moments, when Maurya's last long speech becomes an aria of indescribable beauty and power, would probably bring tears to anyone's eyes. For the first time, the music moves firmly into the major key. Also, rising melodic lines replace the descending lines used in so much of the music to this point. Her acceptance of her tragic fate becomes a blessing, even a redemption, in this wonderful music. No matter that after her final words, the orchestra bursts out again with the minor-key sounds of wind and sea, as it surely must. It's Maurya's final words of acquiescence -- "No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied" -- that resound in your ear long after the music ends.
Every minute of the opera grips, just as the play does in a fine staging, the music following the innate musicality of the English language as rendered by Irish speakers. RVW spent some time in the Galway region, familiarizing himself with the sounds and rhythms of the voices. Every minute of the score benefits from this extra research effort.
In the 1970s, Meredith Davies recorded the opera for EMI with the incomparable Helen Watts in the role of Maurya. More recently, Richard Hickox recorded it in typically rich sound for Chandos. His Maurya was Linda Finnie, also a wonderful singer. My preference is for Watts and Davies, but by a small margin. Either of these recordings will make a marvellous addition to your music collection.
Sunday 25 March 2012
Very Strange Symphony
Sorry, folks, I seem to have gone M.I.A. for a while, due to theatre festivals and related meetings. Anyway, I'm back, with a note about a very unusual symphony -- indeed, it's downright odd.
I got reminded of this one yesterday when I went to the National Ballet of Canada's production of John Neumeier's ballet The Seagull, derived from the play by Chekhov. A large part of the music for this ballet is drawn from the final Fifteenth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
When this music was first heard in 1971 it raised a lot of eyebrows, and if anything the puzzlement has deepened since then. For those who always want to know exactly "why" a creative artist produces a particular work at a particular time, this symphony presents very fertile ground for theorizing, yet offers no more concrete answers now than it did 41 years ago after the premiere.
For one thing, the more raucous, overt side of the composer is largely (not entirely) absent from long stretches of the score. While there are a few loud climaxes, much of the music is very quiet indeed.
The instrumentation is really odd too. There's a large dependence on the bass instruments, and there's also a very big percussion section which plays a crucial role.
Finally, there are the quotations. The first movement moves along at a rapid, yet still amiable tempo, only to be held up several times by a short quotation from Rossini's William Tell overture. The finale likewise opens with a deep lugubrious brass figure quoted from Wagner's Die Walküre. Why those particular quotations from those particular works? Shostakovich never told.
I first heard this symphony in the world premiere recording on EMI which was conducted by the composer's son, Maksim -- and I was hooked by it right from the first hearing. But the recording to get, if you can come by it, is Bernard Haitink's Decca version. Far more than the premiere version, Haitink makes a convincing case for the work as a true symphony, not just some bizarre musical pastiche. His account of that strange finale rises to a truly terror-stricken climax and this passage, with the massive gong stroke that ends it, is faithfully captured by the recording engineers. From that point, the music gradually unwinds into the long diminuendo cadenza for the percussion group, whose gentle clicking and chiming sounds carry the symphony down to its quiet, mysterious end.
On the latest CD reissue, the symphony comes with a considerable bonus: the song cycle (with orchestra) From Jewish Folk Poetry. It's one of a series of works with powerful Jewish overtones that formed Shostakovich's response to the horrors of the Holocaust, and is well worth hearing. The songs make use of harmonies and rhythms drawn from the musical idiom of Jewish music, perfectly supporting the texts. The CD combination of symphony and song cycle is a must hear!
I got reminded of this one yesterday when I went to the National Ballet of Canada's production of John Neumeier's ballet The Seagull, derived from the play by Chekhov. A large part of the music for this ballet is drawn from the final Fifteenth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
When this music was first heard in 1971 it raised a lot of eyebrows, and if anything the puzzlement has deepened since then. For those who always want to know exactly "why" a creative artist produces a particular work at a particular time, this symphony presents very fertile ground for theorizing, yet offers no more concrete answers now than it did 41 years ago after the premiere.
For one thing, the more raucous, overt side of the composer is largely (not entirely) absent from long stretches of the score. While there are a few loud climaxes, much of the music is very quiet indeed.
The instrumentation is really odd too. There's a large dependence on the bass instruments, and there's also a very big percussion section which plays a crucial role.
Finally, there are the quotations. The first movement moves along at a rapid, yet still amiable tempo, only to be held up several times by a short quotation from Rossini's William Tell overture. The finale likewise opens with a deep lugubrious brass figure quoted from Wagner's Die Walküre. Why those particular quotations from those particular works? Shostakovich never told.
I first heard this symphony in the world premiere recording on EMI which was conducted by the composer's son, Maksim -- and I was hooked by it right from the first hearing. But the recording to get, if you can come by it, is Bernard Haitink's Decca version. Far more than the premiere version, Haitink makes a convincing case for the work as a true symphony, not just some bizarre musical pastiche. His account of that strange finale rises to a truly terror-stricken climax and this passage, with the massive gong stroke that ends it, is faithfully captured by the recording engineers. From that point, the music gradually unwinds into the long diminuendo cadenza for the percussion group, whose gentle clicking and chiming sounds carry the symphony down to its quiet, mysterious end.
On the latest CD reissue, the symphony comes with a considerable bonus: the song cycle (with orchestra) From Jewish Folk Poetry. It's one of a series of works with powerful Jewish overtones that formed Shostakovich's response to the horrors of the Holocaust, and is well worth hearing. The songs make use of harmonies and rhythms drawn from the musical idiom of Jewish music, perfectly supporting the texts. The CD combination of symphony and song cycle is a must hear!
Friday 9 March 2012
More English Rarities
My latest recording of music from an English composer is chock full of rarities. That includes no less than three world premiere recordings, all in the same album.
It's also my first acquaintance with the music of William Alwyn -- as a stand-alone composer, that is. He's justly famed for his wonderful film scores to many classic British films of the 1940s and 1950s including (among others) A Night to Remember, The Winslow Boy, and Carve Her Name With Pride.
But Alwyn also composed symphonies, songs, operas, and more. The new Naxos recording gives a fair sample of his art as an orchestral composer. There are two works titled Concerto Grosso, # 2 for strings only, and # 3 for full orchestra. As a string composer, Alwyn fits right in with such distinguished predecessors and contemporaries as Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Dyson, and Howells for his varied and sympathetic handling of the string medium. The Concerto Grosso # 2 is a real treat for any lover of string music.
There's also a Serenade for Orchestra and a dramatic concert overture, The Moor of Venice. That piece, obviously inspired by the story and title character of Shakespeare's Othello, is perhaps the most film-like music in the collection, but even so it clearly shows Alwyn's grasp of larger forms.
The real treat is a suite of six Irish Folk Tunes arranged for orchestra. This music also fits into the long line of folk-inspired music which Vaughan Williams and Holst exemplified. The tunes aren't significantly varied or in any way twisted by the composer. He simply chooses from an endless palette of orchestral sound combinations the right one at each moment to keep the music ever fresh. In its own small way, a masterpiece.
Kudos to conductor David Lloyd-Jones and to Naxos Records for another wonderful introduction to some unfamiliar but delightful music. I'm probably going to be collecting some more Alwyn from the same source shortly!
It's also my first acquaintance with the music of William Alwyn -- as a stand-alone composer, that is. He's justly famed for his wonderful film scores to many classic British films of the 1940s and 1950s including (among others) A Night to Remember, The Winslow Boy, and Carve Her Name With Pride.
But Alwyn also composed symphonies, songs, operas, and more. The new Naxos recording gives a fair sample of his art as an orchestral composer. There are two works titled Concerto Grosso, # 2 for strings only, and # 3 for full orchestra. As a string composer, Alwyn fits right in with such distinguished predecessors and contemporaries as Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Dyson, and Howells for his varied and sympathetic handling of the string medium. The Concerto Grosso # 2 is a real treat for any lover of string music.
There's also a Serenade for Orchestra and a dramatic concert overture, The Moor of Venice. That piece, obviously inspired by the story and title character of Shakespeare's Othello, is perhaps the most film-like music in the collection, but even so it clearly shows Alwyn's grasp of larger forms.
The real treat is a suite of six Irish Folk Tunes arranged for orchestra. This music also fits into the long line of folk-inspired music which Vaughan Williams and Holst exemplified. The tunes aren't significantly varied or in any way twisted by the composer. He simply chooses from an endless palette of orchestral sound combinations the right one at each moment to keep the music ever fresh. In its own small way, a masterpiece.
Kudos to conductor David Lloyd-Jones and to Naxos Records for another wonderful introduction to some unfamiliar but delightful music. I'm probably going to be collecting some more Alwyn from the same source shortly!
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Counting in Fives
Of the different time signatures that can be used in music, 5/4 and 5/8 are not terribly common. That is, outside of the work of one composer. In the case of the English composer Gustav Holst, the challenge becomes almost a case of finding a work that doesn't have a 5-in-a-bar section.
The most famous of Holst's major compositions, with good reason, is the symphonic suite The Planets, and the pounding 5/4 ostinato of the first movement -- Mars, the Bringer of War -- is unmistakable. Yet how many people have noticed that the crystalline glitter of the final Neptune the Mystic is also written throughout in a 5-beat time?
But let's get beyond the well-known Holst. Here are a few more favourite Holst works of mine, each of which has a section in 5/4 or 5/8 time.
The symphonic poem Egdon Heath has a brooding, quiet 5-beat section at its heart. In the ballet music for The Perfect Fool, the Dance of the Spirits of Fire is an energetic 5/8 with spurts of flame aptly represented by stabbing fortissimo chords of the full orchestra.
There are also a number of wonderful choral works by Holst, all greatly undervalued today, which make use of the 5-beat time. The Choral Symphony to poems by Keats uses the 5-beat rhythm very effectively in its first-movement invocation to Bacchus. The Ode to Death, a setting of Whitman, uses a very slow, solemn 5/4 to paint a picture of a funeral procession.
One of Holst's most unique inspirations is his Choral Fantasia. This work was the outcome of a festival commission for a choral work with orchestra, which would include a concerto-scaled organ part. The organ plays a lengthy fugue which culminates in a fortissimo underlain by a 5-beat ostinato on the timpani -- a figure which strangely recalls the sound world of Mars. This ostinato recurs at key points throughout the structure of the work. The most chilling moment comes near the end, when a quiet, menacing stroke on the gong ushers in the final iteration of that rhythmic figure, with the choir chanting in monotone: Then he hideth his face, whence he came to pass away, forgot, unmade, lost for aye with the things that are not.
At the opposite extreme from that darkness is the resplendent glory of The Hymn of Jesus, which I consider Holst's finest work for choir and orchestra. The text is from the Apocrypha, and was translated by Holst himself from the Greek. Being Apocryphal, it naturally includes words that are not familiar from the King James Bible! The centre of gravity of The Hymn of Jesus is the passage where the choir sings: Divine Grace is dancing, dance ye all! -- at which the orchestra leaps into a vigorous 5/4 dance, a bit reminiscent of the final bacchanale of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. And the dance swells into an almost orgiastic unison fortissimo at the words, The heav'nly spheres make music with us, / The Holy Twelve dance with us, / All things join in the dance!
When The Hymn of Jesus was first performed, Vaughan Williams said, "It hasn't been done before, and it couldn't be done again.... If anyone doesn't like The Hymn of Jesus, he doesn't like life." And this, remember, was coming from a man who called himself an atheist! But he was right. All of Holst's music is remarkable in some way or other, but with The Hymn of Jesus he truly went above and beyond. And nothing quite like it, as far as I know, has ever been written again.
All of this music is somewhat better known in Britain than in Europe or the Americas. But even so, you can count the number of recordings some of these works have received on the fingers of one hand! Anyway, seek them out, and be prepared to be intrigued by the unusual uses Holst could make of 5-beat in a bar time.
The most famous of Holst's major compositions, with good reason, is the symphonic suite The Planets, and the pounding 5/4 ostinato of the first movement -- Mars, the Bringer of War -- is unmistakable. Yet how many people have noticed that the crystalline glitter of the final Neptune the Mystic is also written throughout in a 5-beat time?
But let's get beyond the well-known Holst. Here are a few more favourite Holst works of mine, each of which has a section in 5/4 or 5/8 time.
The symphonic poem Egdon Heath has a brooding, quiet 5-beat section at its heart. In the ballet music for The Perfect Fool, the Dance of the Spirits of Fire is an energetic 5/8 with spurts of flame aptly represented by stabbing fortissimo chords of the full orchestra.
There are also a number of wonderful choral works by Holst, all greatly undervalued today, which make use of the 5-beat time. The Choral Symphony to poems by Keats uses the 5-beat rhythm very effectively in its first-movement invocation to Bacchus. The Ode to Death, a setting of Whitman, uses a very slow, solemn 5/4 to paint a picture of a funeral procession.
One of Holst's most unique inspirations is his Choral Fantasia. This work was the outcome of a festival commission for a choral work with orchestra, which would include a concerto-scaled organ part. The organ plays a lengthy fugue which culminates in a fortissimo underlain by a 5-beat ostinato on the timpani -- a figure which strangely recalls the sound world of Mars. This ostinato recurs at key points throughout the structure of the work. The most chilling moment comes near the end, when a quiet, menacing stroke on the gong ushers in the final iteration of that rhythmic figure, with the choir chanting in monotone: Then he hideth his face, whence he came to pass away, forgot, unmade, lost for aye with the things that are not.
At the opposite extreme from that darkness is the resplendent glory of The Hymn of Jesus, which I consider Holst's finest work for choir and orchestra. The text is from the Apocrypha, and was translated by Holst himself from the Greek. Being Apocryphal, it naturally includes words that are not familiar from the King James Bible! The centre of gravity of The Hymn of Jesus is the passage where the choir sings: Divine Grace is dancing, dance ye all! -- at which the orchestra leaps into a vigorous 5/4 dance, a bit reminiscent of the final bacchanale of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. And the dance swells into an almost orgiastic unison fortissimo at the words, The heav'nly spheres make music with us, / The Holy Twelve dance with us, / All things join in the dance!
When The Hymn of Jesus was first performed, Vaughan Williams said, "It hasn't been done before, and it couldn't be done again.... If anyone doesn't like The Hymn of Jesus, he doesn't like life." And this, remember, was coming from a man who called himself an atheist! But he was right. All of Holst's music is remarkable in some way or other, but with The Hymn of Jesus he truly went above and beyond. And nothing quite like it, as far as I know, has ever been written again.
All of this music is somewhat better known in Britain than in Europe or the Americas. But even so, you can count the number of recordings some of these works have received on the fingers of one hand! Anyway, seek them out, and be prepared to be intrigued by the unusual uses Holst could make of 5-beat in a bar time.
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