Something Exotic

Okay, hands up if you've heard of Omar Khayyám.  Anyone?

In this day and age, not so likely.  Ask that about a hundred years ago and almost everyone who did any reading at all would have heard of, and likely read, Edward FitzGerald's translation/adaptation of the Persian mediaeval philosopher, scientist, and poet under the title of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.  This book became one of the publishing phenomena of the Victorian era, and helped to ensure that Khayyám became the best-known Middle Eastern writer in the countries of the Western world.  In five successive editions, FitzGerald gradually expanded the scope of his work until he reached his final text of 101 quatrains.  It must be said in passing that this text represents a tiny fraction of all the writing that Khayyám did in his lifetime!

With that background, it's not surprising that someone stepped up to the plate and set FitzGerald's English version to music.

Okay, hands up if you've heard of Granville Bantock.  Anyone?

If there's a reason for that silence, it's probably the vast scale of Bantock's musical ideas and the singular lack of success he had getting them into performance.  His music echoes Wagnerian methods in a way common to many composers of the time, and his ideas of size definitely out-Wagner the master of Bayreuth.  He planned an epic called The Curse of Kehoma based on the work of Robert Southey (who?) which was to be in 24 parts.  His massive oratorio Christus was completed in an orchestral score that stretches to 700 pages, and then promptly broken into smaller units to make it performable.  But his setting of the Rubáiyát, simply titled Omar Khayyám, did see live performance in 1910 and on a few more occasions before dropping out of sight. 

Which brings me finally to today's recording.  Once again, Chandos Records has done us a huge favour by recording a massive work which probably no other record company could or would touch.  As so often with their projects, the result reveals a work of music which definitely deserves to be more often heard and better appreciated.

Bantock's style is heavy-duty post-Wagnerian when appropriate, and heavily laced with recurring motifs that are carefully labelled and identified in the booklet accompanying the 3 CDs.  I haven't bothered to chase them all down, simply enjoying the flow of the music and slowly coming to recognize the recurrence of these key melodic ideas.  And the music does flow.  Bantock was a good deal more than merely competent, even if he wasn't Wagner, and his music stands up well to repeated hearings.  Certainly he had a good grasp of the art of building up long-range climaxes and then resolving them.

It's interesting that he generally avoids fake Middle Eastern sounds, although one passage does make evocative use of camel bells, and another effectively introduces hand drums.

The final result falls somewhere between a Wagnerian opera and a Hollywood epic movie in sound.  Bantock realistically faced the length of his score by sanctioning cuts, and a few short ones are observed in this recording.  Even with these minimal cuts, the work lasts just a few minutes shy of three hours.

Bantock created three "characters" to be sung as solo roles: the Poet, the Beloved, and the Philosopher.  These three roles are ably and beautifully sung by tenor Toby Spence, mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, and baritone Roderick Williams respectively.  In the third part these three are joined by three more soloists to become the voices of the six pots, formed at the hand of the Potter who makes everything and everyone.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus are on top form throughout, whether in quiet passages of reflection or in the massive climactic buildups such as we hear at the end of Part Two.  Conductor Vernon Handley has the whole gigantic and diverse score in hand right from the magnificent sunrise which begins the work to the gentle fading away of the end.  And the typical rich sound picture so common with Chandos recordings serves this giant tapestry of sound very well.

So Omar Khayyám is a musical curiosity, and a musical rarity indeed.  But it's now readily available as a CD album or for download, and definitely rewarding to the ear -- well, my ear, anyway!