Noel -- Part 2

Another favourite piece of mine uses the same folk carol tunes -- noëls -- as the Daquin organ music.

This, too, comes from the Baroque era in France.  Marc-Antoine Charpentier created one of the most unique pieces of choral music ever when he composed his charming Messe de minuit pour Noël.  No other composer is known to have set the entire Ordinary of the Mass to the tunes of the traditional noëls.  The result could have sounded contrived, but in practice it is completely successful. 

This is due to Charpentier's great skill in the handling of his material.  Not only are the traditional tunes beautifully fitted to the Latin text of the Mass, but the total effect -- orchestration, harmony, and all -- is so joyful and yet gentle that it is totally suited to the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

My recording is an EMI CD which contains the Messe and another more extrovert musical hymn of praise, the same composer's Te Deum in D Major.  The recording of the Messe de minuit dates from 1967 and is conducted by David Willcocks.  The Te Deum is a 1976 recording conducted by Philip Ledger.  Both use the King's College (Cambridge) Choir and the English Chamber Orchestra.  Some people think this sounds too "English" for music of such strong French character, but I don't find that at all.  Every bit of the Messe de minuit sounds just as utterly charming as it must.   This performance uses for organ interludes a selection of organ settings of noëls by Nicolas Lebegue.  As a further point of interest, the organist was a very young Andrew Davis, who was Organ Scholar at King's at the time.  A new recording of the same combination has just appeared from Naxos, with the Aradia Ensemble conducted by Kevin Mallon.  I haven't heard it, but if it is as fine as other recorded performances from this team then it would be well worth having.

I've just been listening to another delightful Baroque work, equally well-suited to Christmas Eve.  This is Die Weihnachtshistorien ("The Christmas Story") by Heinrich Schütz.  This work may date from 1660 or thereabouts, making it much earlier than Bach's Christmas Oratorio.  In any case it is a much lighter and shorter work. 

The backbone of the piece is the lengthy narration of the entire Christmas story by a tenor Evangelist.  This is all in recitative, accompanied by organ.  It sounds boring, but there are so many lovely turns of melody in the writing that it continually piques the ear.  In between the lengthy recitatives of the narration come eight numbered sections called Intermedium.  These too are part of the Biblical story, containing the words of angels, shepherds, wise men, and King Herod.

The only departures from the Biblical text are the opening and closing choruses.  The opening simply announces "The Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ as it has been recorded by the Holy Evangelists."  This chorus has had to be editorially "reconstructed" since the source material contains only a figured bass line under the text.  The concluding chorus of thanksgiving to God is thus the only part of the entire work which steps away from the Biblical story of Christmas.  Contrast that with the numerous arias and choruses of commentary in the Bach Christmas Oratorio.

This recording is from The King's Consort conducted by Robert King.  It adheres scrupulously to the composer's directions for the varied instrumental ensembles to accompany each Intermedium as well as the opening and closing choruses.  Immediately obvious is the restraint of the scoring; trombones and cornetti (or trumpets) are used only in a couple of numbers.  The net effect then is of a gentler, quieter musical experience, again very well adapted to a service on Christmas Eve.  Following on the main work is a selection of Christmas motets by Schütz's first teacher of composition, the renowned Giovanni Gabrieli.  These too are beautifully performed.

These Baroque Christmas works are a far cry from the grand splendours of Bach and Handel, but they each have their own rewards to offer, and I hope you'll feel moved to check them out.



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Noel -- Part 1

When I was young, we listened to a lot of CBC-FM including a morning classical music program that was always on during breakfast.  The host had his firm favourites, and this post is about one that always showed up in December.

France has a centuries-long and lively tradition of popular folk carols which are called "Noels".  These Christmas songs are, however, not well-known outside the French-speaking world, and that is our loss.  There's a whole added layer of tradition, in the form of classical compositions based on these traditional tunes.

In particular, French organists have often prepared and published "livres de Noels", which may have had their origins in organ improvisations during Christmastime services.  There are a number of such collections dating from centuries back, but my personal favourite -- the one I return to time and time again -- is the Nouveau Livre de Noels of Louis-Claude Daquin.

Daquin lived from 1694 to 1772, so his lifespan coincided with those of the most famous of high Baroque composers, Bach and Handel.  Daquin quickly established his reputation as a keyboard player of immense skill, on either harpsichord or organ.  Very few of his compositions survive, but one of the few that did is the Nouveau Livre de Noels -- and with good reason, for it is recorded in a contemporary account that when he played these noels at the organ of the Sainte-Chapelle, all of Paris came to hear him.

The Nouveau Livre de Noels was edited, published and recorded by the American organist E. Power Biggs, and it was his delightful recording that we used to hear so much around the breakfast table.  The pieces quickly became popular standbys of many organists, but it's unlikely that many of the members of the church congregations that hear these charming miniatures could name the composer, or for that matter the traditional tunes on which they are based.

Daquin did the only thing you really can do with traditional tunes -- create variations on them.  And this is what happens in almost every one of the 12 noels.  In line with the traditions of the French classical organists, the entire musical texture -- melody, harmony, and bass -- becomes steadily more elaborate as the tune repeats.  Often, this happens according to a strict scheme -- the number of notes-per-beat is doubled in each variation.  In one instance, the entire melody is recast from a slower triple time to a fast duple time, with enchanting effect.

One curious fact, given the celebratory nature of Christmastime, is how many of the noels actually are in modal keys that are best harmonized in the minor.  Far from sounding sad, the sprightly nature of Daquin's treatment keeps the music upbeat and lively, joyful from start to finish.

In the slower noels, Daquin often uses an enchanting effect which is easy to achieve on an organ but difficult on any other keyboard instrument.  He adds a descant part on top of the melody, placing the tune in the second place among the parts.  An organist, meeting this little problem, can play on two of the manuals (keyboards) simultaneously, using a quieter, gentler tone for the descant so that the melody remains clearly audible.

In the pioneering Biggs recording, all these possibilities were explored with great sensitivity, and with full use of the wide tonal palette of the organ at Harvard which he played.  A more recent digital recording by Christopher Herrick, using a cathedral organ at Dieppe in France, is not quite so effective.  His instrument has such a huge number of heavy reed stops that the music becomes almost ponderous, develops a certain sameness.  The Noels simply aren't as varied as with Biggs, finely as Herrick plays. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Sony (or some other label) could reissue that classic Columbia record?  In the meantime, Herrick's playing makes him a more than acceptable -- if less than perfect -- alternative.

My Christmas season simply isn't complete without Daquin's Nouveau Livre de Noels -- and you may well come to feel the same way, if you enjoy organ music as much as I do.

A Christmas Miracle in Music!

Christmas is a wonderful time of year for musicians and music lovers.  So much beautiful music has been written around the Christmas story at so many periods that it's hard to know where to start.  And of course, much of it is choral.  For many people, Christmas is a time to burst out in mass song with groups of others -- and so it's not surprising that the # 1 perennial Christmastime musical favourite is Handel's oratorio Messiah.  We'll pass lightly over the fact the Handel wrote Messiah for, and always performed Messiah at, Eastertime -- not Christmas.

Another favourite Christmas treasure of mine is Bach's beautiful Christmas Oratorio, and if you know and love Messiah and are wondering where to branch out, this is a good place to start.

But all that was written over two centuries ago (closer to three centuries now).  What about in our own times?  Well, that's where I'm coming to the real theme of this post, a piece composed in the 1950s which truly carries the banner forward from the great Baroque works mentioned above.

Imagine a composer who is into his eighties, who has seen Christmases coming and going throughout his long and fulfilling life.  He's lived for most of his life immersed in the great traditions of Christmas music of the past, whether composed for the church, the concert hall, or simply arising out of the traditions of the people.  As a master orchestrator and composer of music to be sung, he could truly be said to be born for this particular assignment.  Because of his age he can impart great wisdom and power to his music, yet he remains youthful in spirit so he can still write with tremendous drive and energy.  Most of all, he can still be drawn into a childlike spirit of wonder at the beauty of language in the traditional Christmas story, and at the miraculous events described there.  And all these aspects of his personality are going to be clearly heard in the Christmas cantata he is going to compose.

The man (surprise, surprise to my regular followers) is Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the work is Hodie (This Day), which was premiered in 1954. 

Like most of Vaughan Williams, the music is predominantly tonal and lyrical, yet there is also tremendous power here.  Take the long opening sequence: the rumbustious opening chorus, the mysterious wind chords of the narration (given by a children's choir), the huge outburst of sound and glory at the words "Emmanuel, Emmanuel, God with us!", and the following long, lyrical aria for soprano solo setting words from Milton.  What a tremendous variety, and all in ten minutes of music.

More riches abound throughout the score.  The narrative passages from St. Luke's Gospel all start from a similar melodic figure, and then wander off in different directions.  Truly, Vaughan Williams has evolved a workable twentieth-century descendant of Baroque recitative in this piece.  The use of children's choir and chamber organ for this specific purpose works like a charm.

Between the narrations unfold a series of arias setting texts from various English poets through the centuries, and this I feel is the most successful and unified of the composer's numerous "anthology" works of this type.  The showpiece of the lot is the tenor's "Bright portals of the sky" which calls for a powerful voice to overcome the rich orchestration.

The most powerful poem of the collection is "The March of the Three Kings" which was written by the composer's wife, Ursula, specifically for this work (one of two poems so composed).  I find it impossible not to be swept off my feet by the composer's heaven-storming choral/orchestral setting, with solo voices crowning the ensemble, of these lines:

Crowning the skies
The star of morning, star of dayspring calls,
Clear on the hilltop its sharp radiance falls,
Lighting the stable and the broken walls
Where the prince lies.
 

 The mystical conclusion, setting words of St. John's Gospel, and followed by three more verses of Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, is a true culmination -- not least because it draws in so many musical threads from earlier sections of the work.  The final Milton setting takes the music of that first soprano aria and works it into a conclusion of triumphant grandeur.  And the whole work is, as always with a truly great piece, far too short!

Hodie has been recorded several times, but for me the original recording from 1965 reigns supreme.  The conductor was David Willcocks, the leading British choral conductor of his day.  His trio of soloists were Janet Baker, Richard Lewis, and John Shirley-Quirk, all ideally in tune with the musical sound-world of the composer.  Remastered for CD, and joined by a good account of the earlier Fantasia on Christmas Carols (a great representation of the composer's love for folk carols), it's the recording to go for if you can get it.

 

A Vivid and Dramatic Oratorio

Okay, I mentioned it in the last post, I'd better drop the other shoe and cover the whole of Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake") by Arthur Honegger.

The Trial scene, Joan Given Up to the Beasts is the first, but hardly the only, major choral/orchestral fresco in this vivid and dramatic work.  Although Honegger wrote some very experimental pieces at times, he never gave up his faith in the appeal of music to large audiences.  Jeanne d'Arc is plainly designed for such large-scale public performance.  Honegger, though, was far too good a musician to water down the product in these circumstances.

This "dramatic oratorio" (to quote Honegger's own description) uses numerous recurring themes which constantly interweave in new and varying combinations while at the same time evolving in their own shapes to suit their new surroundings.  Not only that, but the themes are often played simultaneously in counterpoint which is apparently as effortless and natural as it is skilful.  Very few composers in the Twentieth Century could manipulate counterpoint so effectively.  Honegger's orchestration is equally skilled, making effective use of the saxophone and of the electronic ondes martenot.  This instrument's strange whistling tone effectively illustrates the poem's pictorial possibilities from a dog's howling to an ass's braying.

Paul Claudel's poem calls for parody in certain places, and Honegger supplies it readily -- the aria of Porcus (the pig) in the trial scene is a lusty parody of 1930s jazz while the Game of Cards scene supplies a neo-Baroque parody of the sound of harpsichords by calling for metal rods laid across the strings of the two pianos.  The music too is a parody of the Baroque style.

The next big moment is the scene of the King's journey to Reims which collates folk songs and folk symbols from north and south into a lavish choral tapestry to symbolize the union of France which Joan had worked to bring about. 

There are two unique features of this work. The first is the fact that the two main characters -- Joan and her confessor, Friar Dominic, are spoken parts, not sung.  This happened simply because the work was commissioned by the actress/dancer Ida Rubinstein, who had very little singing ability.  The other unique feature is that Claudel composed the text so that the story unfolds at the moment of Joan's impending death, from a book read to her by Friar Dominic.  The two comment between the major scenes on what is happening.

Eventually, Dominic reaches the end of his reading and Joan finds herself back in the present.  Once again she hears her angelic voices calling to her.  In a moment of supreme emotional and musical power -- vividly illustrated by a rising glissando from the ondes martenot -- she shatters her earthly bonds, crying out, "Je viens, j'ai cassé, j'ai rompu!" ("I'm coming, I've burst them, I've broken them!").  From this immense climax the music gradually dwindles down to the gentlest of conclusions with a quiet cadence sounding from the flute that has played a key role throughout the work.

Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher was first performed in 1935.  In 1944 Claudel wrote a Prologue for it and Honegger set it to music, giving the work its final form.  It has remained intensely popular in France but has never had as great a welcome elsewhere.  The recording I'm listening to as I write this (conducted by Seiji Ozawa on DGG) is a live performance given during a festival in the Basilica of St-Denis in Paris, 1989.  This church is generally held to have set the standard for the Gothic style that swept across Europe after its construction, and thus is an appropriate setting for a work which is in effect a mighty cathedral created in sound instead of stone.

A Mass of Fools -- and its modern counterpart

In the Middle Ages it was common for the time from Christmas to the New Year to be treated as a time of reversing normal structures and procedures.  Masters and servants changed places, and in the monasteries or cathedrals the younger monks and clerics took control away from the senior abbots and bishops.

When the normal order was reversed, it was also expected that normal events were parodied and satirized in the process.  We know from historic documentation that the Mass was often given in a parodied form, especially on the Feast of Fools (December 26).  There is one text of such a parody mass extant, and it is called the Officium Lusorum (Mass of Gamblers).  This text, without music, is found in the famous Carmina Burana manuscript which later provided the text for Carl Orff's famous cantata in the 20th century.

Now, I've been fascinated by the music of the mediaeval period ever since I was a student, and I've often read or heard of these Fools' Masses without having any idea what they might have sounded like.  That gap in my experience has just been filled.

I recently bought a 7-CD collection from the French ensemble Millenarium, highlighting all kinds of different styles of secular music from the Middle Ages.  One entire disc is devoted to a conjectural reconstruction of a Mass of Fools, using the Officium Lusorum text as a basis for reconstruction.

All I can say is I have never heard anything like this in my life before!  Okay, with one exception -- which I'll get to later. 

The Feast of Fools was also known as the Feast of the Ass -- and so the performers in the Fools' Mass at certain times bray, bellow, or bleat like animals.  There are outrageous parodies of singing style with ridiculous tremolo effects, strained vocal sounds, and the like.  Some parts of the Mass are given in complete and normal style, which only highlights the ridiculous sounds produced in other parts.  The second part of the Mass uses the famous "Song of the Ass" whose tune is well known today as a Christmas hymn in many churches.  On occasion, one can hear laughter and applause, which seem to indicate a live performance (although that is not specifically stated in the booklet).  That's a live concert I would have loved to attend! 

What marks the music as typical of the Middle Ages is that all the singing is in the form of single, unharmonized melodies.  This type of singing, known as "monody" (single voice), was the only kind widely used.  Only as the mediaeval period worked towards its end did any attempt at vocal harmony become widespread.

Thanks to Millenarium for producing (over a period of years) this extraordinary anthology of secular music of the Middle Ages. It is certainly going to find an honoured place in my CD collection. And I expect to get a few good laughs every time I listen to the Officium Lusorum!

And what was that one piece I've heard which seems to grow out of the same tradition?  It was actually written in the 1930s -- and I'm not referring to Orff's masterpiece, much as I enjoy it!  It seems plain to me that Swiss composer Arthur Honegger must have been very familiar with the research done into these Fools' Masses and all the aspects of these outrageous parodies.  In his oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake") a key section is called "Joan given up to the Beasts".  Here, Joan's trial proceeds exactly like a parody from the Feast of Fools with the Ass singing his song to the tune of the mediaeval "Song of the Ass", the sheep as a jury, and the pig (Porcus) as judge -- a wicked pun on the name of Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, who judged Joan ("cochon" is the French name for a wild pig).  The music proceeds with parodies of court procedure and religious ritual all thrown in, with all the characters switching back and forth between debased Latin and modern French (the main language of the work) and with the electronic ondes martenot supplying the ass's braying!

In Remembrance....

Sorry I am a few days late with this post, but in spite of personal issues I need to share with you my three top musical selections for Remembrance Day.  There are many fine pieces both old and new, but these three are (in my opinion) true masterpieces and one of them is definitely undervalued.

Start with the oldest one.  In 1914, as World War One began, the English composer Edward Elgar wrote a piece called Carillon as a tribute to "Gallant Little Belgium" -- very positive and upbeat.  But like many other creative artists, the more private Elgar behind this public face was, I think, already consumed with doubts and fears about what was happening.

Remember Sir Edward Grey's famous remark as war broke out:  "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."  His words were much more prescient than the jingoistic optimism reigning in most public and media utterances of the day.

I believe that creative artists see further and deeper than ordinary folk into such situations.  Certainly, the poet Laurence Binyon did.  His patriotic war poetry struck popular notes (the staunch heroism of British soldiers, the courage of mothers at home) but there is an undeniable thread of darkness running through his verses, and I think it was this emphasis on the darkness engulfing their world that drew Elgar to make musical settings of his poetry.

The war was less than a year old as Elgar composed his setting of For the Fallen, but darkness reigns in his music as in the text.  Combined with two other poems, it forms a choral trilogy called The Spirit of England.  The work was finally completed in 1917, and in its half-hour length captures the heartbreak, sorrow, and doom which war had visited on European civilisation.  For the Fallen includes the most famous of Binyon's lines:

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Oddly enough, Elgar's setting of these lines forms only a quiet interlude between the two massive, dark funeral-march hymns which begin and end the movement.  The final great climax and the long slow descent to quiet darkness and despair at the end of the work are built on these powerful lines:

As stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As stars that are starry in the time of our darkness
To the end, to the end they remain.

This profoundly moving music has been rarely performed and more rarely recorded.  I think the apparently jingoistic title puts many people off.  But you certainly should make the acquaintance of The Spirit of England.  The Chandos recording I have was made in the rich, resonant acoustic of Paisley Abbey in Scotland, and features the Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson.  The accompanying Coronation Ode for King Edward VII is a very jingoistic piece, but since it includes the original and thrilling vocal setting of Land of Hope and Glory, replete with organ and extra brass bands, I think it is forgivable!

The second piece is better-known, but still deserves to be heard more often.  In the 1930s, Ralph Vaughan Williams pulled together a cantata which he called Dona nobis pacem.  The main portion of the text consists of three poems from the American Civil War by Walt Whitman, framed by settings of portions of the Latin mass, the Psalms, and even the famous "Angel of Death" speech made by John Bright in Parliament during the Crimean War.  At the heart of this passionate appeal for peace comes the intensely moving Dirge for Two Veterans.  Whitman's poem describes a not uncommon tragedy of the Civil War -- the simultaneous burial of a father and son, both killed in battle.  Vaughan Williams uses the full resources of the modern orchestra to build the thunderous climax demanded by Whitman's description: "...and the strong dead march enwraps me."  The final section erupts into a jubilant Gloria in excelsis as the composer envisages the world where war will be no more, but he ends in a more unsettled mood with the soprano soloist still pleading for peace.  My favourite recording of this cantata (I have several) is on EMI conducted by Richard Hickox with Yvonne Kenny in the pivotal soprano role.  It comes generously paired with the yet rarer oratorio Sancta Civitas with a young but already formidable Bryn Terfel in the central solo part -- and that's a piece I will write more about on some future date.

Finally, one of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century: the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten.  In 1941 the industrial city of Coventry was firebombed into destruction, leaving the smoking shell of the burnt-out cathedral amid devastation.  In 1962, a new cathedral was consecrated and Britten was commissioned to compose a major work for the occasion.  The result was one of the most unique works of music ever written.  Britten alternates his settings of the major sections of the Latin Mass for the Dead with the anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches a week before the conclusion of World War One.

The Mass is set for large orchestra, chorus, and soprano solo.  The Owen poems use a small chamber orchestra and tenor and baritone solos.  There is also a boys choir which adopts a more impersonal tone, seeming to come from a remote place outside the main body of the music. 

Britten's task was made easier by the fact that Owen used many Biblical references in his poetry, some subtle, some very overt.  One whole poem is indeed a parody of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abram in the Old Testament.  What could be more natural, then, than to juxtapose that poem with the Latin line Quam olim Abrahae promisisti et semini ejus ("As he promised to Abraham and his seed forever").

Right from the opening notes, it's plain that the composer means to make the audience feel a bit uncomfortable or disoriented.  The very opening features the first of many appearances of the tritone, the augmented fourth, the musical interval that was known in mediaeval times as diabolus in musica because it was impossible to harmonize.  But Britten does use it to disharmonize, and also as a melodic interval, continually shaking the ground the music stands on.

Generally, the settings of the Latin text and the poems appear in alternate sections, but in the Agnus dei they flow together.  The ancient Latin prayer and Owen's poem occur simultaneously to powerful effect:

One ever hangs where shelled roads part,
In this war He too lost a limb,
But his disciples hide apart
And now the soldiers bear with Him.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest
And in their faces there is pride
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast
By whom the gentle Christ's denied.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their lives, they do not hate.

And then, on a quietly rising scale, the tenor soloist for the first and only time joins in the Latin text:

Dona nobis pacem.

The true emotional climax of the work comes in the final section.  The reiteration of the Dies irae builds up to one of the most shattering climaxes in all music, a cacophonous roaring which then gradually dies away to a gentle held note.  The tenor then begins Owen's most moving poem, Strange Meeting, which describes two soldiers meeting after death in a "profound dark tunnel".  They come to terms with the fate which led one of them to kill the other, and then end with the words of reconciliation "Let us sleep now."  This gradually joins with the final utterances of In paradisum deducant te angeli and Requiem aeternam from the choir, boys choir and soloists, and the final Amen is a decided question mark.

Britten's own recording, made shortly after the premiere, is one of the great historic documents of recorded music -- and in its most recent Decca re-release the sound has been miraculously cleaned of all the hiss that formerly marred the tape.  Among more modern recordings, my own preference goes to Richard Hickox on Chandos because of the richness and clarity of the sound (especially notable in that last humongous climax) and the inclusion of two substantial early Britten extras, the Ballad of Heroes and the Sinfonia da Requiem, both obviously linked thematically to the main work.  If you have never heard War Requiem, you owe it to yourself to do so as soon as you can!

Strangely Neglected Masterpieces

A few years ago, a student of mine in Elliot Lake asked me to accompany her for the upcoming music festival in a performance of Wieniawski's Violin Concerto # 2 in D Minor.  Of the composer, I knew only the name and the music was completely unknown to me. 

This, I was to discover, is a sadly common state of affairs.  Wieniawski was acclaimed in his lifetime by no less a figure than Anton Rubinstein as "without doubt the greatest violinist of his time."  This second concerto was dedicated to "his dear friend, Pablo de Sarasate", the famous Spanish violin virtuoso.  These concertos were known everywhere and played everywhere for many years after his death.  Then came the change of attitude.  Wieniawski's music fell out of favour, and was consigned by many to be fit only as a study work for advanced violin students.

From my first day of studying the piano reduction of the orchestral part, I guessed this was a mistaken attitude.  In the short space of 16 bars, Wieniawski introduces two distinct melodies which may well be considered, short as they are, as the first and second main themes of the movement.  The first is a restless, rapidly moving tune for the strings, the second a meltingly lyrical line for the solo horn.  The two themes repeat while turning in a different direction and we are launched into a concerto first movement of a kind that Beethoven and Mozart would recognize, where a clear and complete (but brief) tutti for the orchestra precedes the first entry of the soloist.

But Wieniawski is never conventional.  When (after a dramatic climax) the violin does enter, it takes up the horn melody and turns it in very unexpected directions.  What follows is a kind of free fantasia on the musical themes, until at last the orchestra again takes the lead.  By a more complex route, with significant alterations in the orchestration, the same great climax is reached and then the music dies away, bit by bit, becoming quieter and then slower.  When the violin re-enters after several minutes we realize that we are now in the concerto's slow movement.  Few composers have ever effected a seamless transition from a big fast movement to a simpler slow movement with such subtlety.

The slow movement is a nonstop outpouring of lyrical melody from the violin, discreetly supported by the orchestral strings (and occasionally the winds).  This grows to a passionate climax (which always brought tears to my eyes when my student and I played it) and then dies away again to a gentle conclusion.

The final movement is separate.  It's a gypsy rondo of a virtuoso kind familiar to such composers as Brahms and Liszt, but the fast-flying violin keeps twisting and turning unexpectedly into new and different keys.  This is certainly a showpiece, but even as it flashes and glitters it still contains enough musical substance to give it more weight than some nineteenth-century virtuoso works.

The common feature of all three movements is the obstinately memorable melodies.  It's difficult to listen to this music, and not come away humming some tune or other!

Shortly before that music festival, I picked up a copy of a DGG CD which contains the two violin concertos and a darkly lyrical piece called Legend in G Minor, along with the famous Zigeunerweisen of Sarasate as a fill-up.  Gil Shaham is the violinist, and the London Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Lawrence Foster.  Both concertos are played with brilliance and verve, but also with a clear realization of the kinship to the classicists.  The symphonic weight of the orchestral passages is fully emphasized.

Of the other recordings I have found available, the great majority are either historic recordings by great violinists of the early years of the last century, or produced by small adventurous labels using relatively little-known artists.  It seems a pity that this music, full of beauty and substance, has been thus consigned to the back rows of the cheap seats in the estimation of the musical world.

More Hidden Treasures

Sorry to have been off the page for so long, but what could I do?  Life is just so full of "interesting developments"!

Anyway, prior to a roadtrip last week I dug out a couple of other CDs I hadn't listened to in a long time: a disc of opera overtures by Rameau and a disc of string quartets by Sirmen (who?)

Jean-Philippe Rameau was a court composer at the court of Versailles, and his music was largely written for the elaborate entertainments which were so often featured at that court -- part opera, part ballet, part pantomime, and all lavish and fantastic.

When I dug this disc out, I was expecting a collection of "French overtures".  This is a form established by Lully, widely copied, and certainly familiar to lovers of Bach and Handel: a slow introduction in a dotted rhythm, a vigorous allegro movement, and a brief return to the slow introductory material before the closing.

Rameau was assuredly French, but he was determined to blaze his own path and diverge from the model followed by Lully and his successors for so many years.  Rameau's overtures don't fall into the pattern at all.  This entire Oiseau-Lyre CD is a collection of brisk, sparkling fast movements.  Each piece has a distinct melodic feel to it.  The opera-ballets for which these overtures were written were inevitably based on classical myths, and a knowledge of the mythical stories certainly helps you to decode the titles!  The music uses a diverse, piquant range of instrumentation -- none calculated to make you sit up faster than the heavy thwacks on the bass drum in the penultimate track, which effectively simulate the swinging of Vulcan's hammer.  The players of Les Talens Lyriques under the direction of Christophe Rousset do all of this music proud.

And then I came to a beautiful disc of the music of Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen.  The name of course is a dead giveaway.  Here is one of the great rarities of recorded classical music: a female composer.  Not to say that female composers were themselves terribly rare -- but for them to achieve public notice certainly was rare, and for one to achieve the accolade of a recording rarer still.  However, some enterprising recording companies have been taking steps in recent decades to set the record straight (groan), and this disc came from the Cala label in 1994.  It features the considerable musicianship of the Allegri String Quartet.

Lombardini became famous across Europe for her considerable skill as a composer and her more-than-considerable gift as a concert violinist.  Documentary records exist of her performances of her six violin concertos in a number of major musical centres.   The quartets were written when she was still young, and at a time when the "string quartet" as we know it was just coming into existence.  Thus, Lombardini was right on the cutting edge of a new musical form. 

If her name has remained largely unknown in our own time, blame it on our obsession with just a few top composers.  Adulation for Haydn and Mozart leaves little elbow room for any other composer of their day to achieve a hearing -- and that is our loss.

Lombardini's music sounds like just what it is -- contemporaneous with Haydn and clearly out of the top drawer.  In over an hour of music (four quartets) there isn't really a single boring moment.  Much credit goes, of course, to the Allegris whose artistry sets the seal on music of great beauty and substance.

The Biggest Symphony Ever

Way back near the beginning of this blog I wrote about Schoenberg's monumental cantata Gurrelieder.  Before he had even finished this work, Schoenberg had realized that music had worked itself into a dead end where it was no longer possible to simply get bigger and more complex.  He therefore launched out on a much more radical path.

But there was one composer who still managed to get bigger and more complex, and did it moreover at the same time as European music was drastically reinventing itself.  I guess it helps to defy the fashion if you are largely self-taught!  British composer Havergal Brian spent the years from 1919 to 1927 composing the most gigantic symphony ever performed (there are two more recent works which are alleged to be longer but have remained unheard).

The Gothic Symphony lasts for just under 2 hours and uses the largest orchestra ever assembled, including six woodwinds in each section and four extra brass bands.  As well as the conventional orchestral instruments in huge numbers, the score calls for such unusual instruments as the alto flute, basset horn, contrabass clarinet, contrabass trombone, and (in the percussion department) a "bird scare".  It also requires a quartet of vocal soloists, four adult choirs, and a large children's choir.  In spite of these vast demands the work has actually been performed completely 6 times, and on 2 of those occasions the performing forces were dedicated and enthusiastic amateurs!  For the first two complete performances, in 1961 and 1966, the composer was present.

Don't kid yourself that this music is easy because of that comment about amateur performers!  The symphony has many passages of fiendish technical complexity, and while the musical language is predominantly tonal there are a number of truly polytonal sections that would tax any professional conductor's skills to hold the performing forces together!

The symphony consists of two parts, with three main movements in each part, and is meant to be played continuously without a break.  The first three movements are orchestral, and clearly reflect the traditional symphonic ideal.  The opening allegro is in a recognizable sonata form, and is followed by a slow movement of tremendous intensity, and a demonic scherzo.  The scherzo eventually subsides into a wistful and serene cadence out of which emerges the unaccompanied chorus that launches the long choral finale's first section.  The text is the ancient Latin hymn Te deum laudamus, a text with obvious application to a symphony which seems to depict in sound both the majestic architecture and the spiritual intensity of the Gothic age.

This symphony is full of amazing moments in every section, and if the composer's intention were to awe and overwhelm his listeners then he certainly achieved his goal!  Whether it's the striding triple-forte opening of the work, the majestic yet anguished 5/4 climax of the slow movement, or the raucous xylophone cadenza and successive wild key swerves of the end of the scherzo, his orchestral writing is never less than gripping.  The choral sections of the finale are more episodic, yet the music is still held together by the frequent use of the rising motive D-E-G-A in various forms.  Brian's writing for the voices is invariably effective and sometimes much more than that.  One of his most forward-looking moments opens the second part of the finale: the four unaccompanied choirs sing the word Judex on block triads of D, E Minor, G, and A simultaneously, creating a massive tone cluster which is utterly unlike anything else in music.  Actually, that last phrase describes the entire symphony.

The easiest way to describe Havergal Brian's music is to think in terms of march rhythms.  Whether slow or fast, the march dominates his music in a way that even exceeds the use of marches by Mahler.  The idea of dance as a musical inspiration is almost never heard.  Even when Brian slips into triple time, the effect is usually of a fast 1-beat-in-a-bar march.  One of the best examples in the final section of the Gothic Symphony is a march for 6 clarinets that leads into a vast crescendo of all the forces at the words Et rege eos, after which the clarinets return and march away again into the distance.

When I started writing this account, I just dipped for a moment into a Wikipedia page about the symphony to refresh my mind on a couple of details.  There I found out (to my considerable chagrin) that the Gothic Symphony was performed live at the BBC proms in London last summer (2011).  If I had known, I would certainly have tried to get a ticket.  But it would have been a challenge, as the 8000-plus capacity of the Royal Albert Hall was sold out on the first day of ticket sales!  Evidently, there's an audience for this music, and in my mind it's no wonder!

In 1989 the Marco Polo recording company commissioned the first-ever commercial recording sessions of the symphony, and their version later transferred to the company's budget label Naxos.  This, and many other recordings of Brian's symphonies, can still be obtained from the company's Classics Online website.  In digital sound, the recording does a magnificent job of clarifying Brian's massive textures, and if much of the quieter music sounds like it's being played in another room that's the inevitable penalty of trying to fit so many performers into a single hall!  But the performance, under the direction of Ondrej Lenard, is never less than impressive, and certainly well worth its modest cost. 

Good for Lotsa Laffs!

It's a real pity that the French opéra-bouffe tradition isn't better known in North America, where the classic English comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan hold sway alongside the operettas of Strauss and Lehar.  If the music of Jacques Offenbach, the genius of opera-bouffe is known at all, it's through the delirious arrangement that Manuel Rosenthal made of excerpts from his operettas, in the ballet called Gaité Parisienne.

Today's subject is an even rarer fish: the first successful opéra-bouffe from Emanuel Chabrier.  Chabrier is better known for his orchestral fantasy Espana, but there's no doubt in my mind that this comic opera, L'Étoile, is out of the top drawer and certainly ought to be better known and more often performed.  It was first performed in 1877 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, which had been the scene of many of Offenbach's most memorable productions.  My sources assure me that L'Étoile is indeed becoming better known since John Eliot Gardiner made his magnificent recording at the Opéra de Lyon in 1984.

Like any good comic opera, L'Étoile has a plot which is ridiculous but characters which are believable.  The star of the show is mezzo-soprano Colette Alliot-Lugaz in the breeches role of the peddler Lazuli, the young hero who eventually sweeps Princess Laoula off her feet.  Georges Gautier is first-rate in the tenor role of King Ouf, and the veteran bass Gabriel Bacquier is a splendid foil as the astronomer royal and fortune-teller Siroco. 

There are lots of sparkling musical delights in this score -- in fact it's loaded with plums!  But one of my personal favourites is the chorus of welcome for the King in the opening scene ("Vive Ouf, vive notre Ouf" sung at top speed by the chorus in a French equivalent of a G&S patter song).  Another splendid moment comes after Lazuli has been (apparently) drowned in the lake.  The chorus sing their condolences to Laouala but their song quickly evolves into a can-can!  In the final act Lazuli staggers ashore and sings a song in which he sneezes repeatedly while the orchestra wittily echoes his sneezing.  And so on, and so on.  And in the end, because it is comic opera, Lazuli and Laouala are happily married with Ouf's blessing.  This makes King Ouf one of the very few leading tenors in opera history who doesn't get the girl!

EMI reissued Gardiner's classic recording as a 2-CD bargain set a few years back, and that's when I picked it up.  If this sounds appealing to you, grab it fast if you see it!

Hidden Treasure

Every so often I dig out a CD that I hadn't listened to for a long time.  And when I do it's usually a real treasure that repays my time amply.

This was an unusual one from the world of chamber music: a pair of "double quartets" by Louis Spohr.  Right away, the questions start flowing:  [1]  Isn't a double quartet the same thing as an octet?  [2]  Who the heck is Louis Spohr anyway?  [3]  Why haven't I heard of this guy or his music before?

Take them in reverse order.  You probably haven't heard of him because his lifespan overlapped those of Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, and the Powers-that-be have decided long ago that he is an unimportant figure compared to those giants.  Once again, I beg to differ.

So:  Louis Spohr lived frm 1784 to 1859.  In his own lifetime he was esteemed as a first-rank virtuoso of the violin and as a conductor.  He composed numerous symphonies, operas, oratorios, 7 violin concertos (!) and a large trove of chamber music ensembles of varying sizes.

This brings us to the present works.  The "double quartet" idea originated with another violinist and composer, Andreas Romberg, whom Spohr held in considerable esteem.  It was Spohr who took up the concept and made it his own in four double quartets.  The difference from an octet is simply that the two quartets remain separate but equal bodies, perhaps seated thus on stage, in order to allow for antiphonal interplay between them.

Now, this is a familiar concept in vocal music, where composers for centuries have composed works for multiple choirs allowing for antiphonal singing.  But Spohr moved the idea into a new realm with his double quartets, and even took it into orchestral music in his Seventh Symphony for 2 orchestras!  This sounds fascinating, and I must have a look for a possible recording.

In the meantime, here we have the first two double quartets played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble.  The 1986 Hyperion recording has a full acoustic with just enough reverbrance to suit chamber music.  As for the music itself, hese are the works of a mature and skilled composer and it shows in the development of the musical material.  Only the medium still tested him as he explored the possibilities opening up for him.  But certainly the double quartet format creates rich and glowing textures that are subtly different from a conventional octet.  At any rate, this is very listenable music with enough depth to satisfy repeated hearings.  I'm also going to be casting about for a recording (perhaps more recent) of the third and fourth double quartets, in which his mastery of the form is said to be considerably greater.  In the meantime, I am surely going to enjoy this one!

The Touches of Sweet Harmony

I want to go out on my limb right at the outset.  Argue with me at your peril.

Considering music as music, I venture to suggest that the most musically perfect setting ever made of Shakespeare's poetry is the Serenade to Music composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams (yes, him again!) in 1938.

For starters, I have long felt that the Garden Scene from Act V of The Merchant of Venice is one of the most beautiful poetic set-pieces of Shakespeare's entire career.  When Vaughan Williams took up this poetry at the very height of his lyrical and orchestral powers, the result was and is an absolutely glorious marriage of words and music.

That, by the way, isn't my metaphor.  Michael Kennedy, the great English scholar and musicologist, described the long orchestral introduction of the Serenade (which introduces several of the main themes) and then simply added: "Thereafter, words and music, indissolubly wedded, speak for themselves."  And that really is all anyone needs to say.

The Serenade to Music was composed in 1938 for a special occasion: a Jubilee Concert to honour the 50th anniversary of the conducting career of Sir Henry Wood, the Music Director of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.  Vaughan Williams composed a piece of music like no other, setting Shakespeare's poetry for orchestra and sixteen solo voices of sixteen singers closely associated with Wood.  After that memorable premiere (and the mono recording made soon afterwards) he revised the piece for the more conventional choir and four soloists, and that's the form in which it's usually heard.

This post was triggered by the unusual treat of hearing the Serenade performed live in the original version for multiple soloists.  The Elmer Iseler Singers sang it thus at the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound last night, and did the music full justice.  They are one of the very few chamber choirs I know that would dare such a feat, and 'tis pity only a few hundred people got to hear the performance.

You see, recordings of the Serenade to Music as originally composed are very rare birds.  The first mono recording has been available on a specialist label devoted to historic reissues (I haven't heard it but have read that it is certainly worth seeking out).  Sir Adrian Boult recorded it in stereo in the late 1960s as fill-up to the equally lyrical Fifth Symphony, and this record has long been a favourite of mine.  Hyperion Records did a more recent version which I felt was let down by one or two instances of wobbly intonation, and a couple of overly-broad vibratos.  These are the only versions of the original Serenade that I know of, and would be glad to hear of others.  But for me, the Boult recording approaches to perfection -- singers in every part as nearly perfectly matched to their roles as in 1938.  If you can find that, don't hesitate.

I will confidently predict that anyone who hears this music for the first time will fall under its spell immediately, and anyone who has only heard it with choir-and-solo-quartet will feel a sense of revelation when hearing it performed as originally written.

"Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony."

Violin Serenity

To clarify right at the outset: today's music is certainly not unknown to specialists in the violin, or specialists in the Baroque era.  But to the average music lover, Biber's Rosenkranz (Rosary) Sonatas are totally unknown, and that's a pity.

Years ago, I was marking papers in my classroom one day at lunch hour when the principal walked in to ask something, stopped to listen for a moment, and then said, "That's lovely -- so calm and serene."  This of course helped to explain why it was good music to accompany marking!

These sonatas were composed in or near the year 1676, which places them a half-century before the famous St. Matthew Passion of Bach, just to give a reference point.  From the title Rosary Sonatas it is plain that these works are related to Catholic ritual, specifically to the devotion  of the Rosary which was much favoured in Austria at the time they were written.

There's a tremendous amount of programmatic intention underlying the music, as the sonatas are each identified with one of the 15 mysteries of  the Rosary.  In each sonata, the first movement expresses the description of the action or the mood of the moment described.  The other movements are in some cases less relevant to the programmatic structure.  The best way to grasp the structure is to read a detailed description.

Technically, this is music of a difficulty far beyond anything else of its time, and these sonatas played no small part in making Biber known as a virtuoso violinist of the first order.  To cite only one point, each sonata requires that the instrument be tuned differently!

The wonder of the Rosary Sonatas is that you can ignore all the programmatic underlay and all the technical information and simply immerse yourself in the glorious melodic depths of the music.  And it is unquestionably music that invites immersion and meditation, even in its more vehement moments.

The recording I own comes from Virgin Classics and is played by John Holloway, with the instrumental ensemble Tragicomedia providing accompaniment on a diverse, piquant range of instruments.  Since scoring in Biber's day was haphazard and continuo instruments not specified, this is a perfectly defensible practice -- so long as you understand that in another recording the music could sound very different indeed!  At any rate, in Holloway's hands there is not a single dull moment in the two hours of music -- and there are many moments of sheer wonder and beauty that make you stop all else and just listen.  And that's something of a miracle indeed in our hurry-hurry age.

Sorrowful Beauty Part 3

I've spoken before about the English composer Herbert Howells.  In 1935, he suffered the cruel loss to polio of his son Michael (aged 9).  It was suggested by his daughter that he try to channel his grief into composition, and he began work on a large-scale choral work in memory of Michael.  It remained unfinished, but numerous other works large and small through his career attested to the continuing impact of Michael's death in his father's personal and creative life.

In 1949 Howells was asked if he would compose a large-scale choral/orchestral work for the 1950 Three Choirs Festival.  He dug out the unfinished torso of the memorial piece, and set to work on it again.  The result, premiered in September of 1950 was Hymnus Paradisi -- by any measure one of the true masterpieces of twentieth-century music.

Groundbreaking it is not, at least not at first glance.  There's nothing terribly revolutionary in Howells' handling of voices and instruments, nor in his melodic and structural approach.  What is totally unique is the style Howells evolved, distinctively his own, in which conflicting harmonies in differing choral or instrumental voices are used to generate a kind of harmonic tension in the music.  The result in Hymnus Paradisi was aptly described by Michael Kennedy as a tissue of luminescence, a glowing musical equivalent of the lux perpetua which is a recurring theme of the texts Howells chose -- the "white radiance of eternity" as Shelley called it.

With that clue in hand, it's easy to hear how the music does indeed begin to glow and pulse with light practically from its first bars.  Howells uses his orchestra and voices most imaginatively -- consider the intense burst of orchestral and vocal power in the middle of the second movement.  The texts, too, are carefully chosen and arranged to form a continuous line of poetic thought from beginning to end.  The first three movements, an instrumental prelude and two movements for choir, soloists and orchestra, are played continuously.  Then, after a pause requested by the composer, the last three movements follow one by one.  The final movement eventually returns to the single winding line of melody which opened the work 50 minutes earlier.

For me, the emotional heart of the work resides in the fifth movement.  A tenor soloists quietly utters the words of scripture, "I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, 'Write...'" and is overlapped in answer by the gently sung chording of the choir with the words: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord".  Any lover of Brahms' German Requiem will instantly recognize this as the text set by Brahms in his final movement, and with that they spiritual kinship between the two works comes into focus.  Both composers are concerned, not with interceding in prayer for the souls of the dead, but with invoking consolation for the living.  Howells continues with a series of rhapsodic, freely sung cadenzas for tenor and soprano, but eventually the music fades quietly away on a simple cadence at the words, "...for they rest from their labours."

Hymnus Paradisi has been recorded just three times, and is very rarely performed outside of Britain (and not terribly frequently even there).  This is nothing short of scandalous, in my humble opinion.

Sir David Willcocks helmed the premiere recording in the 1960s for EMI, and it was and is a marvellous unveiling of a uniquely beautiful musical world.  I've also heard the much more recent digital Hyperion version conducted by Vernon Handley.  Interpretively, and in the choice of soloists, Willcocks has the edge but the Hyperion sound favours Handley and he also has the substantial and beautiful bonus of An English Mass for choir, organ and strings.  I've not heard the most recent Chandos recording under Richard Hickox, but if his other English choral recordings are anything to go by it is undoubtedly just as serious a contender.

Please, don't miss up any opportunity that comes your way to encounter this masterly evocation of grief and consolation, a truly great moment in the music of the last century.

Some Further Thoughts on Asrael

Most unusually, I wrote and published my previous entry on Josef Suk's Asrael Symphony without having recently listened to the piece.  After publishing, I took it with me on a car drive and listened right through, and found out that memory, the weakest of all witnesses, had let me down in one or two details.

First: although the opening movement begins, proceeds, and ends in a relatively slow andante there are some faster passages, and a truly monumental climax, which my mind immediately interprets as an expression of the composer's rage at the cruel blows of fate.

The last movement, too, opens in a mood something like anger before finally spending its passion and finishing in a bleak, calm C major.

Also, in the slow 4th movement there is a frequently repeated melodic motif which opens with a descending major third played twice.  This seems like an unconscious or semi-conscious reminiscence of the opening melody of Dvořák's concert overture Amid Nature.  What else it might mean in the context of Suk's musical tribute to Otilka I can't imagine, which is why I'm less inclined to see this as a deliberate quotation (unlike the death motif from Dvořák's Requiem in the second movement. 

Another interesting point is that the orchestration of that second movement in places intriguingly anticipates the scoring of Schmidt's 4th Symphony, which was the subject of my previous major post.  I don't know if Asrael was familiar to Schmidt, but it seems entirely possible, even likely, that he heard it and perhaps even played it himself.

In sum: the Asrael Symphony is by no means all slow and solemn as I had previously written, but the dark and sombre mood certainly colours the entire work regardless of tempo.

Sorrowful Beauty Part 2

Hi again!  Sorry I've been off for so long, life just gets busybusybusy sometimes!

So here's another symphonic work created out of the impulse of grief.  The composer is a Czech, Josef Suk, who was married to Antonin Dvořák's daughter, Otilie (known familiarly as Otilka).  Suk was a pupil of Dvořák's at the conservatory, and the older composer was very much his father in art, as can be seen in Suk's earlier works.  So it was a very great shock to Suk when his father-in-law died in 1904, and a year later Otilka followed him to the grave.

Out of this double loss was born one of Suk's largest and most heartfelt compositions: a symphony in C minor which he entitled Asrael, after the name of the Islamic Angel of Death who leads the souls of the departed to Paradise.  Originally he planned the concluding portion of the symphony as a celebration of Dvořák's life and work.  But when Otilka also died, Suk revised his plans and began an entirely new fourth and fifth movement.  The first three movements (the tribute to Dvořák) are to be played without a break.  Suk calls for a pause after the third, and the fourth is specifically entitled "To Otilka".  The final movement then ends the work, after a final struggle, in a kind of calm acceptance of death and tragedy.

The symphony lasts for almost an hour.  Only the third of the five movements is in a fast tempo marked vivace.  Otherwise, the work is solemn and for the most part dark and sombre.  In the second movement, Suk repeatedly uses a 4-note motif from Dvořák's late Requiem:  D - D# - Db - D.  Suk's repeated use of this despairing sound in a limited time makes it even more a motif of death than the elder composer's unifying use of it throughout his massive cantata setting of the Mass for the Dead.

Lest all of this sound too dark and heavy, Asrael also has a kind of luminosity in its scoring which glows with subdued light throughout.  The composer's own voice comes through loud and clear, and the result is a piece which deserves more frequent hearings.

The famous commentator Norman Lebrecht selected Václav Talich's 1952 mono recording on the Czech Supraphon label as one of his 100 top recordings of all time.  I haven't heard it myself, but would like to -- Lebrecht's judgement in these matters is uncannily like mine so if it impressed him I am sure I would like it too.

The modern digital recording I have is certainly as fine a performance as you could wish to get in modern sound.  It's a Chandos CD from 1992 with the rich acoustic that is this label's signature mark, and a deeply-felt performance by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Jiří
Bělohlávek.

Sorrowful Beauty Part 1

Many of the world's greatest masterpieces of art in all its forms have been created out of the impulse of personal sorrow or loss.  In music, there are innumerable examples, and many are well known.  A few, such as the Dvorak Stabat Mater which I mentioned in my Holy Week series, hover at the edge of the well-known repertory.  Others, like today's work, are all but unknown.

Correction:  "all but unknown" in North America.  In Austria, the homeland of composer Franz Schmidt, his Fourth Symphony is an admitted and admired masterpiece, and frequently played.  Yet it remains a rarity elsewhere.  It's our loss.  Fortunately, there are several good recordings.

The symphony was composed in 1933 and is subtitled "requiem for my daughter".  There's no mistaking the tone of sorrow in the music, yet in the end the composer wins through to an acceptance of that sorrow as a part of life.  Schmidt writes in a tonal musical language that appears to take no account of revolutionary developments in music.  But the structure is unique and indeed revolutionary in its own right.  The symphony consists of 4 linked sections that together form a gigantic single-movement work, and across its 45-minute span the piece is held together by its 3 main themes.  Two are heard in the opening section, effectively the "first and second groups" of the traditional sonata form, and the third comes in the slow second section.  But the third theme sounds familiar, and no wonder, since it makes use of a similar sequence of intervals as the first. 

The symphony opens with a meandering theme for solo trumpet, which is gradually joined by other instruments.  It's important as much for the use of the interval of a fourth (a key musical image throughout the symphony) as for its actual shape.  It builds to a climactic statement with the timpani beating out a funereal march tempo underneath.  This dies away, and the wide-ranging second theme appears in the strings.  The two weave together, until eventually the second theme too dies away to prepare for the radiant opening, on cellos, of the second section.

This "slow movement" is the heart of the sorrow in this work, but it is filled all the same with an unmistakable air of consolation that is most uplifting.  The theme here opens with a dropping fourth followed by a rising scale.  Before long, Schmidt inverts it into a wistful rising fourth followed by a descending scale.  The drumbeats return and the music builds to an anguished climax before slowly dying away in resignation.  A few more quiet grumbles from the timpani, and the third section begins.

This part, the symphony's "scherzo", is a quicker version of the slow third theme, on violins this time, and treated in part as a fugue.  Again, the intervals of the theme are inverted to add spice to the mix.  The first theme in slower time is superimposed on it, and the resourceful composer again builds up to a huge climax in which the rhythmic impulse of the scherzo utterly disintegrates in a massive discordant wave of sound topped by a loud scream of anguish from the trumpets.

Out of that gigantic and terrifying climax the trumpet emerges with the opening theme again, and we realize that the last section is to be a recapitulation of the opening, thus bringing the symphony full circle as surely as any traditional sonata form.  In a similar process to that followed before, the music rises to a richly-harmonized climax which carries on longer than it did before, and weaves the first two main themes together as one.  This gradually dies away and once more the drumbeats are heard as the initial trumpet melody reappears.  The other instruments drop away one by one until the last few notes of that long winding song of sadness are sung by the trumpet, alone again as at the beginning -- a full circle indeed.

I've been fortunate to hear this piece played live twice, once in Toronto and once in Philadelphia, and both times I was shocked to realize it was coming to its close.  It's a full and rich 45 minutes, and yet passes by very quickly indeed, so involving is Schmidt's musical vision.  I think that's a good test for recognizing a masterpiece!

I also have two recordings.  One dating from the early 1970s from Decca Records was made in Vienna (where the musicians have this music in their blood) by the young Zubin Mehta, and was reissued in harness with his recordings from the same time period of Mahler's Second Symphony.  The other, more recent, from Chandos Records is from the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Jarvi, part of a complete box set of the 4 symphonies of Franz Schmidt.  There's not a lot to choose between them, as both are excellent.

The Opera Mahler Never Wrote

At this week's performances of Mahler's 8th Symphony in Toronto, the program reproduced a newspaper interview with Andrew Davis (then the Toronto Symphony's music director) at the time of the first Toronto performances of the 8th in 1983.  Davis said that Part 2 of the Symphony was the closest Mahler ever came to the opera he never wrote.

I respectfully beg to differ with Maestro Davis.  Mahler got closer right at the beginning of his career, with an intensely dramatic cantata entitled Das klagende Lied.  The German verb klagen has two meanings, so the title can be translated as "The Song of Lamentation" or "The Song of Accusation" -- and both meanings are implicit in the libretto.

The story, drawn from the brothers Grimm, tells of a proud and haughty Queen who will marry the first man to bring her a certain rare flower from the forest.  Two brothers, one fair and one dark, set out to search.  The fair-haired brother finds the flower, then lies down to sleep.  The dark-haired brother kills him and takes the flower back to the Queen.  She agrees to marry him.

A minstrel finds the bones of the dead brother in the forest, and carves a bone flute for himself.  When he plays it, the flute speaks, telling how the fair-haired knight died.  The minstrel appears at the wedding feast and plays his flute.  The new king seizes it from him, and plays it himself.  The flute accuses him directly, brother to brother.  The wedding guests flee in horror, the Queen faints, the castle collapses.

The music Mahler composed for this gruesome legend stretches across a huge emotional gamut, from gentle quiet forest sounds to the roaring turmoil of the end of the wedding feast.  The poetic libretto, which he wrote himself, does not include speaking parts for any of the characters except the bone flute, but the main characters are so clearly drawn in the narration that the net effect is as much of an opera as a concert work.  There are extensive parts for four vocal soloists and choir, and the standard late Romantic orchestra is used.  This sounds pretty conventional, but the elements of psychodrama found in this material by Mahler are so effectively expressed in music that you can come away with your hair standing on end after listening to it.  An excellent example is the depiction in music of the King's rage when the minstrel plays the bone flute -- and the contrasting eerie stillness right before the King begins playing the flute..

The alto voice provides the song of the flute when the minstrel plays.  However, when the King seizes the flute the voice instead becomes a soprano, singing a more extended and florid version of the song, the literal "song of accusation" indicated by the title.  Motifs from throughout the cantata come thick and fast as the story rushes to its climax.

Another memorable moment, and a clear foretaste of the mature Mahler, comes at the beginning of the wedding scene where an offstage brass band provides celebratory music in alternation with the onstage orchestra.  Many times in his symphonies Mahler would use the element of distance and space in his music, separating instruments, placing them offstage or "at a distance".

After a first performance,  Mahler suppressed the first part of the cantata (which depicts the murder) for reasons which remain unclear.  Thus, Das klagende Lied was published as a two-part work and played that way for years.  The manuscript of the original first part was finally published in the 1960s, and I would not recommend any performance that does not include it.

I have a CD copy of the first recording to include Part 1.  That was made for Columbia (now Sony) Records in London by Pierre Boulez.  Curiously, it has a different soloist in Part 1 because he got permission to record that after the other 2 parts had already been set down.  On LP it was always a bit fuzzy, but the CD remaster has been all benefit, the sound now clear and firm throughout.  A more recent EMI digital recording was made in Birmingham by Simon Rattle, also good, but I give Boulez the edge on 2 counts.  First, his performance seems to me more raw-edged in its emotions, a most necessary condition.  And second, the EMI engineers placed the offstage band in part 3  too far away from the microphones, making it hard to hear unless you turn the volume up -- in which case, the next entry of the full orchestra will just about blow through your eardrums.

I hope the Toronto Symphony management will soon be persuaded to stage a complete performance of Das klagende Lied -- I've been waiting a long time to hear this rarity live.  In the meantime, I am now going to go and listen to the Boulez recording again!

Opera as Song Cycle

That's the insightful comment in the program notes of my favourite recording of one of my all-time favourite operas, and a shamefully neglected one at that:  Daphne by Richard Strauss.  It's actually a spot-on description of a rather undramatic piece that specializes in rapturous lyrical melodies and warm, rich orchestration -- indeed, a work that is almost better suited for the concert stage than the opera house.  That is precisely how I first made Daphne's acquaintance, at the Toronto Symphony under then-music director Andrew Davis.  It was love at first hearing!

The libretto is not a strong one (relatively speaking) but the music Strauss built on this foundation is among his finest achievements.  The more you come to know this late work (first performed in 1938), the more you realize what a masterpiece Strauss created.  The opera builds steadily from scene to scene through its 100-minute span; there is no act break and rarely even a pause in the musical flow.  All leads to the culminating moment where the nymph Daphne is magically transformed into a laurel tree.  The composer depicted this transformation in a flow of lyricism unsurpassed in his entire output, five minutes of soaring melody and lush orchestral sound -- until the final moments when the voice of Daphne sounds, distantly, wordlessly, with one of her characteristic motifs used throughout the score.  Her voice is surrounded by gently twittering woodwinds, and the musical portrait of the breeze stirring the leaves of the laurel tree couldn't possibly be any clearer.

In that Toronto Symphony semi-staged concert, the lights gradually assumed a dappled pattern across the front of the stage while soprano Catherine Malfitano took the entire 5 minutes to slowly turn her back to the audience, and just as slowly draw off her hooded white dress, revealing a green gown underneath with a mottled leaf-like pattern.  That simple but effective change, combined with the flowering of the music, was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

The shame is that, as far as I know, Daphne has only ever been recorded in full twice.  As well, there is a live performance recording from Vienna, made in the early 1960s, and conducted by Karl Böhm, to whom the opera was dedicated.  Curiously, this performance produces no special advantage such as one might associate with a live staging.  I think perhaps it is because Gundula Janowitz in the title role is too cool and precise, not involving enough.  As well there are stage noises at a few moments to distract from the music.

However, EMI has recently reissued Bernard Haitink's studio recording from the 1980s, which stars the incomparable Lucia Popp, who was surely born to sing this role.  The slightly girlish quality in her voice is admirable for the opening scenes, and she rises most effectively to the tragedy of her last great aria.  Then, her voice is floated gently across those mystical final bars, with no sense of strain at all.  Along with her, tenors Peter Schreier (as Daphne's mortal friend Leukippos) and Reiner Goldberg (as Apollo) both create their characters effectively, Schreier clearly drawing the frustration of Leukippos while Goldberg's voice rises to the heldentenor challenge of the god's confidence and power.  Bass Kurt Moll and contralto Ortrun Wenkel are strong in the smaller roles of Daphne's parents, Peneios and Gaea.  And the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is in magnificent form throughout.  The 1982 digital recording comes up clearer than ever, and the set includes a bonus 3rd disc with a detailed synopsis and the full libretto in a computer file -- an ideal cost-effective solution as opposed to printing a massive libretto booklet which would then require an outer cardboard sleeve to contain it beside the CD jewel box.

Making Love in 3/4 Time

Don't worry, this blog isn't going X-rated!  I used the term "making love" in the old 19th-century sense where it covered everything from writing love letters to whispering sweet nothings in your beloved's ear.  And I doubt if 3/4 time would have been considered appropriate for love music anywhere except Vienna, where people dance through life to the beguiling rhythm of the Viennese waltz.

As did Johannes Brahms.  By now, some of you may know where I'm headed, but it's surprising and indeed distressing to see just how many music lovers aren't acquainted with the musically seductive beauties of the master's Liebeslieder-Walzer ("Love Song Waltes").  The waltzes of the first set were written shortly after Brahms moved to Vienna, a kind of musical tribute of affection for the city which he adopted as his own and made his home for the rest of his life.  The music has a special kind of springtime freshness, young love with a spring in its step.  The second set, triggered by the success of the first, came some years later and are a little darker and more introspective, but still very lovely.

Poetry by Friedrich Daumer may not be all the rage in literary circles, but study the texts of these songs carefully and you will soon see that Brahms, as ever, set the words with an acute ear for the meaning and innate emotional temperature of Daumer's verses.

While the waltzes are often performed by small choruses, and have been recorded that way, the ideal is to hear them as Brahms wrote them: for a quartet of voices and a piano played 4-hands.  And the recording I'm listening to now ideally fulfills those conditions.  It's old, but I've never heard another that captured the innate qualities of this beautiful music any better.  The soloists are from the front rank of EMI's best-known oratorio singers of the late 1950s.  Canadian baritone Donald Bell is still young and in fine form, before his voice was swamped by the tremolo.  For the rest, Elsie Morison as soprano has a girlish quality that suits this music of young love, Marjorie Thomas is a dependable alto with a smooth vocal quality, and Richard Lewis uses his lightest, most persuasive tones to shape every phrase of his music.

In the Liebeslieder-Walzer, the duo pianists are every bit as important as the singers -- no mere accompaniment, this.  And this recording has the services of the wonderful duo of Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, who did so much after the Second World War to revive interest in piano playing for 4 hands at one piano.  Indeed, the LP cover featured their names and photograph rather than those of the singers, and rightly so, for it is their wonderfully varied and sensitive playing that anchors the entire performance, as it must.

The net result is that the obstinately memorable melodies linger long after hearing in your mind -- and in your heart.  After all, this is love music!

Rare and Majestic Masterpiece

Okay, I'm nailing my colours to the mast right at the beginning of this post.  This concerto is a masterwork on the same plane as the great piano concerti of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart.  There --  I said it.  Disagree with me if you like, but that's what I think and how I feel.

Sorry?

Oh, which concerto? 

(Ooops!  My bad....)

The Op. 38 Piano Concerto by Ferrucio Busoni.  Now, here's a rarity indeed.  It's so fiendishly difficult that only a handful of pianists have it in their repertoire.  It's also so challenging for the orchestra that few have time to rehearse it.  Thus, any live performance is an event!  The Concerto is in 5 movements, lasts for 70 minutes (or more), is played nonstop, and includes not only a sizable orchestra but also an offstage male chorus in the finale!  So here we are, back at the third piece for piano, orchestra and chorus which I promised a few days ago.

One reason the Busoni Concerto bears comparison with the great masters named above is the careful thought which the composer put into its organization and structure.  The first, third, and fifth movements are solid, solemn, and powerful -- reflecting the Germanic side of the musical world which Busoni inhabited.  The second and fourth have been appropriately described as "sinister, glittering, Italianate scherzos."  Many themes from the first movement are recalled in the fifth, and also hinted at in the third.  This gives the Concerto a strong organic unity.

Where the Busoni work really resembles the two great concerti of Brahms is in the fact that, like Brahms, Busoni has woven the piano part in many areas fully into the orchestral texture.  The result is the polar opposite of the showy "virtuoso" works so popular in the nineteenth century, where the orchestra has to restrain itself so the soloist has ample time and room to show off.  Busoni's Concerto is certainly a challenge for any virtuoso, but the pianist's technical prowess is nearly always subdued to the needs of the music, rather than the other way around.  As Busoni's biographer, Edward J. Dent, remarked: "It is nearly always the orchestra which seems to be possessed of the composer's most prophetic inspiration. Busoni sits at the pianoforte, listens, comments, decorates, and dreams."  In this scheme, the quiet singing of the offstage male chorus in the final movement is simply another element in the total sound picture, rather than the kind of gigantic spiritual triumph found at the end of choral symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler, and others.

John Ogdon gave the Busoni Concerto its first recording in the 1960s for EMI.  If you can get this pioneering account, you should, for it breathes all the wonder of fresh discovery.  Among more recent recordings, the one to go for is the 1999 Hyperion CD with Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder.  The rich digital sound allows Busoni's densest textures to come through clearly, and Hamelin clearly is fully in command of the most demonically complex passagework.  There's also a video performance of the Concerto by Hamelin with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska which can be found on YouTube.

Music for Piano, Orchestra,... and CHORUS???

Now, there's an odd combination for you.  There may be others floating around out there, but I only know of three works which feature this particular grouping of performers.

One is well known, by name at least.  Yet how many people have actually heard Beethoven's Choral Fantasy?  Give it a listen, and you can't miss the family resemblance between the choral finale and the famous finale of the 9th Choral Symphony.  Yet how do you describe it?  Musically, the choral movement of this work is like the child, and the Ode to Joy of the Ninth is the adult which that child eventually grew to become.  Thus, the Ninth is obviously more mature, more involving, and much more sophisticated.  None of that makes the Choral Fantasy any less endearing.

More mature by far is the lengthy solo piano cadenza which opens the piece, and the series of variations for piano and orchestra which parallel the structure of the choral variations in the Ninth.  My personal favourite recording is a Toronto Symphony outing under Andrew Davis with the formidable Anton Kuerti at the keyboard and the full, rich sound of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in the final minutes.

A much more recent work came from my old friend Vaughan Williams.  His Fantasia on the Old 104th Psalm Tune was composed for the famous Three Choirs Festival in England, and again includes a substantial piano part.  But the choir in this work sings right along with the pianist and orchestra throughout the piece.  The piano writing is dense and heavy -- I'm the first one to admit that Vaughan Williams didn't always do his best work for the keyboard, although he was the consummate composer of music for strings.  Despite that, or perhaps because of it, this is a majestic, powerful piece.  Where the Beethoven is like a joyful dance, the Vaughan Williams more befits a solemn occasion such as a coronation or perhaps the enthronement of a bishop, although it was not written for any such event.  The slower tempo of this music, with its frequent pauses, is perfectly suited for the cathedral acoustic in which it was first performed.

The third piece will form the substance of my next post.

Not-so-Famous Last Words

Okay, that title's stretching a point a bit.  The 9th Symphony wasn't really the last word from Vaughan Williams, as he kept working on several other projects including a symphony and a new full-length opera!  But it was the last major work he completed before his death in 1958.  That brings it very close indeed to modern times, but the composer -- as always -- followed his own chosen path in a more conservative idiom.  Yet it would be foolish indeed to label the piece as "old-fashioned" or "reactionary" (many have revealed their foolishness by doing so publicly).

That's because Vaughan Williams spent the concluding years of his life experimenting with new and unusual sounds and structures.  In his 7th Symphony (Sinfonia antartica) he found intriguing sound equivalents for ice, snow, wind, and the implacability of nature.  In his 8th Symphony he made use (in his own words) of "all the hitting instruments which can command definite notes" and "all the 'phones and 'spiels known to the composer."  The effect was nothing if not provocative and scintillating.

The unique sound world of the 9th Symphony owes something to the use of a group of three saxophones, which often play in block chords of the sort that the composer frequently used when writing for strings.  These saxophones (and a flugelhorn) give the music a sound that is paradoxically both dark and luminous, and much of the rest of the orchestration supports that sound -- violas are also much more prominent in this symphony than usual.  This dark radiance arises from the composer's inspiration for the work, which has been shown to definitely be based in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and the area around Salisbury Plain which figures in that novel.

By this time Vaughan Williams had left the tradition of the sonata form movement far behind him, yet this work is most definitely a symphony and nothing else.  The music uses long-breathed melodic lines which support the symphonic structures.  The first movement starts out with a long rising theme which the composer said was prompted by something in the organ part of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.  It is immediately followed by the block chording of the saxophones, for the first of a number of times in the work.  The movement rises to a couple of louder moments but ends in a long, musing epilogue for solo violin in RVW's characteristic ruminating manner.

The second opens with a poetic flugelhorn solo, followed by a barbaric rhythmic drumming figure which alternates with the flugelhorn, and eventually rises to dominate the movement.

The third movement is a bizarre scherzo which suggests soldiers marching across the countryside, with side drums to the fore, and dissonant fanfare figures from the brasses. 

The lengthy and loosely-structured finale begins with a long wandering melodic figure that gradually rises to a chordal cadence that has been heard before and will appear several more times.  There comes a clear break in the musical flow, and then a viola melody continues along new lines.  The music ends in a place which the composer often used to great effect, alternating major and minor chords in close keys.  The last word of this remarkable work consists of three great swelling waves of sound that rise up and then sink down as the saxophone chords sound in between them.  The third and biggest wave dwindles into silence, decorated by harp arpeggios.

I first discovered this remarkable and moving piece on LP through Sir Adrian Boult's EMI recording, and that is still a favourite in its CD reissue.  Bernard Haitink's more recent EMI CD confirms the truly symphonic stature of the piece in modern digital sound and is well worth hearing too.  Both versions appear on CD coupled with the 8th Symphony, a natural and sensible pairing.

Rare and Beautiful from RVW

The English composer Ralph (pronounced "Rafe" by the way) Vaughan Williams is very well known to church choir singers in the Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England tradition.  That's due to his work as editor of The English Hymnal and the Oxford Book of Carols, and in particular to the many traditional tunes which he harmonized for both books.  Aside from the church connection, his work has been sadly undervalued in North America, although his music is enduringly popular in his homeland.  I'm glad to do anything I can to redress the balance. 

RVW (handy short form!) was a far more diverse and skilled composer than the foregoing paragraph might suggest.  His 9 symphonies are a significant landmark in the history of the form.  He composed a significant body of songs, both with piano and with orchestra.  His body of major choral works with orchestra is very large, and in quality ranks with the best of the last 2 centuries.  He wrote several operas and several ballets, as well as some chamber music.  I've mentioned him a few times already in this blog, but now I want to focus right in on some of the rarer pieces he wrote -- works which are every bit as acomplished as the better-known pieces.

I'm listening to a reissue CD in EMI's "British Composers" series, a series which draws heavily on the music of RVW.  Out of four works on the disc, only one is at all well-known.  The others have been extremely rare birds, both on record and in live performance.

To deal with the well-known one first: Flos Campi is a "suite" for small orchestra, wordless choir, and solo viola.  In fact, the wind players in the work are all soloists too, but the viola player is the featured voice.  And a voice it certainly is.  The six movements are prefaced with quotations from The Song of Solomon, but no words are sung.  However, the viola part is so "vocal" in character that any use of a sung text would be superfluous.  The music is rapturous, lyrical, passionate -- in short, a musical love song parallel to the written love song of the Bible.  Oriental, too, with more than a slight whiff of the Middle East floating through -- especially in the brazen march of the fourth movement.

Now, let's see what other treasures nestle around it.  The disc opens with what I think was one of the most beautiful lyrical outpourings of RVW's entire career (and there were many of them!).  When the composer set to work on the intensely musical poetry of Matthew Arnold, the result was An Oxford Elegy -- setting words from two Arnold poems, The Scholar-Gypsy and Thyrsis.  Rather than try to devise musical equivalents for all of Arnold's soaring phrases, Vaughan Williams opted to use a speaking voice -- sometimes over the music, sometimes in the silence between sections -- as well as a choir singing certain selected passages.  This feature has acted as a handicap to some, but I've always felt that the solution could be no other.  As for the music, it has a certain autumnal quality that goes well with the tone of regret suffusing the poetry.  Yet it remains intensely, visually enchanting from start to finish. 

The second piece is a short choral hymn for Whitsuntide (Pentecost) -- recorded at the same time as Flos Campi and An Oxford Elegy (1968) but for some reason never released.  It's a simple but effective piece indeed, with the choir's rapturous "Alleluias" punctuating the tenor soloist's phrases.

The final work (also the largest) is Sancta Civitas, described by RVW as an "oratorio".  It is that, in the sense that it sets some of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, from the book of Revelation.  However, any resemblance to the traditional oratorio form stops dead right there.  The music flows through a series of contrasting sections for 35 minutes without any pause.  The narration of the text (the whole book is a narration, of course) is shared between a baritone soloist and no less than three choirs: a large mixed choir, a small semi-chorus, and a distant treble chorus.  Each choral body has its own distinctive selection of orchestral sounds supporting it.  The treble group, placed apart from the main body, has to come in distantly yet clearly.

Right there, I suppose, is the reason Sancta Civitas has been so rarely performed and recorded.  Even if the numbers of performers aren't as great, that plan ranks for sheer complexity right alongside Mahler's 8th Symphony and Britten's War Requiem!  Yet, as always when RVW set words to music, every sound is absolutely right in its context. 

The whole piece is full of marvellous writing -- the 5/4 time, used so differently from Holst, in the battle scene when heaven opens, the beating drums and wailing cries as the angel standing in the sun summons the birds to feast on the flesh of the dead, the dirge for the fallen glories of Babylon -- each one is clearly drawn with vivid musical detail.  The emotional heart of the work is the long, rapturous description of the vision of the new heaven and the new earth -- heightened by RVW's favourite device of a solo violin musing in quasi-recitative over muted strings.  Then comes the spectacular hymn of praise to the Almighty, the final key tenor solo, "Behold, I come quickly," and the quiet fading away of the music.

All of the recordings on this CD I'm listening to were conducted by the dean of English choral conductors, Sir David Willcocks -- already in 1968 at the height of his powers.  Vocal soloists, speaker (John Westbrook a key part of An Oxford Elegy's success), choirs, orchestras are all in top form, and the sound on the CD release couldn't be bettered.  Alternate recordings are available of Flos Campi (several) and of Sancta Civitas (one that I know of, conducted by Richard Hickox) and may be easier to find, but this particular collection is a prize if you can find it.