Way back when I was just starting this blog, I wrote a detailed post about some favourite music of George Dyson. I unaccountably forgot to mention one more disc, and indeed hadn't listened to it for ages until I dug it out last week and put it on in the car. It's a Hyperion CD featuring the St. Michael's Singers and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and conducted by Jonathan Rennert.
For much of his life, Dyson worked with school and amateur choirs. The first sets of pieces on this disc, Three Songs of Praise and Three Choral Hymns both were written in the 1930s when he was teaching and conducting in Winchester. These are well-written pieces within the competence of amateur and younger singers, perhaps a little simple, but very beautiful nonetheless.
These hymns are followed by a brief but effective setting of Psalm 150 for chorus and organ, which Dyson composed for the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.
The real prizes, though, come at the end, in two larger works from the "Indian Summer" at the end of Dyson's career. First we hear a Fantasia and Ground Bass for organ, composed in 1960. Dyson started his musical career as an organist, but it was only at the latter end that he began composing for the organ. It seems a pity, as this work begins with the sort of imposing opening that makes you sit up and pay attention right away! The score lasts for over 16 minutes, but the symphonic character and length of the themes prevent the music from ever dragging or seeming too thin for its length. This is the work of a master, and the composer plainly at home with larger forms of music. You'd never suspect that from the assured simplicities of the earlier hymns and songs.
The last piece on the disc is entitled simply Hierusalem, and identified only as a "hymn". This is just as disingenuous as Dyson's use of "cycle of poems" to describe his monumental oratorio, Quo Vadis. Indeed, Hierusalem is a full-scale 20-minute cantata to a mediaeval poem about the Holy City, and involves a soprano soloist and choir, harp, organ, string quartet and string orchestra!
In my previous post about Dyson's music I commented briefly about his dramatic sense, and here again it works at full stretch. The text presents a kind of "preview" of the joys of the heavenly life in the voice of one still firmly locked into the present life on earth. Dyson captures this scenario perfectly, with the longing notes of the soprano representing the earthly voice of the human aspiring towards the divine. The chorus is placed distantly, by the composer's intention, and the result is a clear sense that the "present" of humanity looks towards the distant "future" of heavenly joy. Dyson uses the contrast of solo strings with string orchestra as felicitously as Vaughan Williams did in his masterly Tallis Fantasia, and the harp and organ are effectively used to touch in the colours of the picture at appropriate moments. The whole result gives me a feeling that I am looking at a lovely impressionistic watercolour painting of Paradise through a veil.
Performances of all the works are first-rate, and the Hyperion digital sound is splendid as always. You might enjoy the choral hymns or pass lightly over them, as I tend to do, but the Fantasia and Ground Bass and Hierusalem both captivate me from start to finish.
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