'Dreaming and Singing' from fine Music Makers in a watery themed Prom - Prom 53

Sir Andrew Davis
© BBC/Chris Chrisodoulou

Stacey Tappan (soprano)
Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
Anthony Gregory (tenor)

BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)

Thursday 29 August 2019, 7pm

BBC Prom 53

Royal Albert Hall, London

★★★★

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Hugh Wood (b.1932): Scenes from Comus

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934): The Music Makers, Op. 69

Dame Sarah Connolly & the BBCSO
© BBC/Chris Chrisodoulou

Vaughan Williams:
A 'richly warm and affectionate reading of this well-loved piece'.

Wood:
'Davis was positively swinging with the offbeats and frequent beat changes'.

Elgar:'
The BBC Symphony Chorus 'delivered the text with excellent precision, and flawless tuning throughout.

Connolly 'gave an impassioned and commanding performance here. ... her final lines ... brought a tear to many an eye'.

Read my full review on Bachtrack here.

CD Reviews - January 2018

If you have any interest in song, particularly English song, then I cannot recommend this disc highly enough – and if you don’t think you like English song, give it a go anyway, I’m sure you will be converted.  Baritone Roderick Williams’ beautiful honeyed tones, accompanied expertly by pianist Susie Allan, communicate this repertoire in a way I’ve rarely heard it before.  George Butterworth’s (1885-1916) ‘Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad’ that open the disc are achingly moving, not least with the added poignancy of Butterworth’s death in the First World War aged 31, just five years after composing the songs.  Williams’ heartfelt sadness in ‘The Lads in their Hundreds’ is almost unbearable, and his characterisation of the ghostly apparition and his old friend in ‘Is my team ploughing’ is deeply affecting.  I have to confess to shedding several tears when I heard them perform this at the CD’s launch, and the recording is no less affecting.  There’s so much here – twenty-eight songs in total – that it’s hard to single things out.  Ireland (1879-1962), Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and Britten (1913-1976) are all represented here, but also Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) – another casualty of the war, his already fragile mental health never recovered, and he ended his days in a mental hospital.  His setting of ‘Sleep’ by John Fletcher that ends the disc again has added significance perhaps, with its plea for peace and joy through sleep.  There are lighter moments too, with Gurney’s jolly ‘Captain Stratton’s Fancy’, and Peter Warlock’s (1894-1930) brief ‘Jillian of Berry’, and Williams relishes the chance to let loose.  And two songs from the only living composer represented, Ian Venables (b.1955), confirm the art of English song is still alive and well – his fleeting expression of a butterfly in flight, ‘Flying Crooked’ is a delightful miniature, and Williams enjoys the melodic twists and turns, with delicate support from Allan.  Vaughan Williams’ ‘Silent Noon’ and Britten’s ‘The Salley Gardens’ receive particularly touching renditions from Williams – I could rave about every song on this disc, there are truly no fillers here, but space restricts me to urging you to seek this recording out.

Various. 2017. Celebrating English Song. Roderick Williams, Susie Allan. Compact Disc. Somm SOMMCD 0177. 

French harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard has taken part in many recordings, including several with Audax Records’ founder, Johannes Pramsohler, and his Ensemble Diderot.  But the latest Audax recording, a wonderful collection of works for keyboard by Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), is Grisvard’s solo recording debut.  Whilst the Suites are the most well-known and established of Handel’s keyboard works, Grisvard has also included a number of rarities, and a few pieces by lesser-known contemporaries.  This is a wise move, as it offers the listener much needed variety on a solo instrumental recording.  A particular gem is the arrangement by William Babell (1690-1723) of ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Handel’s opera, Rinaldo – Babell’s arrangement of the opera’s overture is also here – in which Grisvard really makes the instrument sing out the aria’s familiar tune.  In his informative notes, Grisvard speculates as to whether these were arrangements by the English composer, or possibly even transcriptions of performances by Handel himself – the bell-like Prelude Presto from Babell that opens the disc certainly sounds like an improvised introduction to such a performance.  The Suite No. 2 has an almost mournful opening Adagio, and the E minor Suite has a delicate, graceful Sarabande.  As well as showing his virtuosic command in the showier movements (such as the E minor Suite’s final Gigue), it is in these subtler moments that Grisvard communicates most directly with poise and grace.  A lively if a little formulaic Capriccio by Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712), Handel’s teacher, a brief Prelude from contemporary Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), and a pleasing Toccata by Johann Krieger (1649-1725) serve to further demonstrate the imaginative superiority of Handel’s compositions, and the wonderful Chaconne in G major here includes variations from several versions of the work, making it the most substantial piece on offer, and Grisvard clearly enjoys the virtuosic challenges, building through the increasingly complex variations to an impressive conclusion.  This is a delightfully varied and impressively commanding debut from Grisvard.

Various. 2017. Handel: Works for Keyboard. Philippe Grisvard. Compact Disc. Audax Records. ADX 13709.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica, his seventh symphony, has its origins in the composer’s music for the film Scott of the Antarctic in 1948.  The symphony followed in 1951, and it makes use of a wordless soprano soloist (Mari Eriksmoen here) and a female chorus, also worldless (the singers here drawn from the Bergen Philharmonic Choir and the Edvard Grieg Kor) – hauntingly ethereal here, without being overly intrusive.  But the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, under Sir Andrew Davis are the stars here, with some breathtakingly taut and controlled playing, perfectly capturing the desolation and desperation of Scott’s ill-fated expedition.  There is a real sense of the expanse of the landscape, and impending doom, and the crashing entry of the organ at the end of the third movement is truly terrifying.  Vaughan Williams wrote his Four Last Songs, settings of poems by Ursula, his second wife and longtime muse, shortly after their marriage in 1953 (although their love affair had begun in 1938).  The songs were orchestrated by Anthony Payne (b.1936) in 2013, and were premiered at the Proms by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, but here they receive their premiere recording by a male voice, none other than baritone Roderick Williams.  Payne’s sensitive scoring, and Williams’ aforementioned rich tones, bring these brief romantic gems to life.  The disc is finished off with Vaughan Williams’ Concerto for Two Pianos.  This started life as a Concerto for Piano, but his piano part proved overly challenging, and the suggestion of a version for two pianos followed.  Pianist Joseph Cooper (1912-2001) was charged with the arrangement, but Vaughan Williams changed the ending and added a new cadenza.  It opens with crashing, percussive explosions from the pianos, setting up a lively, energetic Toccata.  The central Romanza is more lyrical and romantic, with some subtle writing for woodwind, and the final Fugue and Finale, separated by a cadenza, return to the opening’s lively extrovert style.  Canadian pianists Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie add great muscular attack and bite to the outer movements, as well as bringing sensitivity, lush lyricism and subtlety to the Romanza.  Once again, Davis and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra provide sumptuous orchestral textures in support. 

Vaughan Williams, R. 2017. Sinfonia Antartica, Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Four Last Songs. Louis Lortie, Hélène Mercier, Roderick Williams, Mari Eriksmoen, Bergen Philharmonic Choir, Edvard Grieg Kor, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis. Hybrid Super Audio Compact Disc. Chandos CHSA 5186.


(Edited versions of these reviews first appeared in GScene, January 2018)

CD Reviews - July 2016

Ensemble Diderot, lead by Johannes Pramsohler, have completed a project begun by the great Reinhard Goebel with Musica Antiqua Köln (who disbanded in 2007). Goebel & MAK recorded six of Johann Friedrich Meister’s (c1638-1697) twelve Trio Sonatas, ‘Il Giardino del piacere’ as their final enterprise, and Goebel himself asked Pramsohler and the Ensemble Diderot to record the final six.  All the Sonatas have multiple, relatively short movements, based on dance forms, but Meister was one of the first, if not the first German composer to take the prevailing style of Lully and others and move the music away from the ‘danceable’ forms to what became Ars combinatoria. So the French and Italian styles were developed and combined, creating a more intellectual ‘art music’. So whilst the Gigue in this ninth sonata has a real bounce, played by the Ensemble Diderot with lively spirit, it is no longer obviously a simple dance. The Corrente of the twelfth sonata has real rhythmic spice, with accented offbeats, and the Allemanda of the same piece has striking upbeats, all creating great interest and once again moving the form away from the expected. The Ensemble Diderot vary the textures too, with the harpsichord dropping out of the Sarabanda in the twelfth, leaving the cello to provide a walking bass line.  On the other hand, the harpsichord provides delicate touches to the seventh sonata’s Sarabanda, and the violins stylishly emphasise the offbeats in the first sonata’s Sarabanda, demonstrating the variety Meister creates in a seemingly homogenous choice of structure. The third sonata contains a beautiful Adagio, with the cello starting each phrase with long held notes over which the violins and harpsichord weave plangent cries – here cellist Gulrim Choi maintains a perfectly even, semplice sound for the others to work off. The Fuga movements are often brief, but allow for great interplay between the two violins, particularly noticeable in the seventh sonata. These are exquisite sonatas, and from the performances here, it was easy to see how much the players have taken this music to heart.

Meister, J. F. 2016. Il giardino del piacere. Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler. Compact Disc. Addax Records ADX 13705.

Sergei Prokofiev’s (1891-1953) three Piano Sonatas, Nos. 6, 7 and 8 were completed between 1940 and 1944, although he had begun work in 1939, and they are perhaps understandably collectively known as the ‘War Sonatas’ (although when he composed the first of these, the Soviet Union were still to enter the war).  Prokofiev didn’t necessarily conceive them to be performed as a trilogy, but there are clear links between them, both in specific detail such as the ‘fate’ motif which crops up in all three, but also in emotional depth and content, and world events of the time are never far from one’s mind when hearing them.  There is a consistent mood of conflict here, never fully resolved, with moments of highly disturbing tension.  Even in the more romantic calm of the 8^th Sonata, fate is still present, although perhaps there is a hint of happier thoughts, given that Prokofiev dedicated this sonata to Mira Mendelssohn, for who he left his first wife and family in 1939.  Peter Donohoe gives the slow movement in particular of this sonata full lyricism and weighty emotion.  In total contrast, his finale of the 7^th Sonata is truly exciting and he gives the incessant repeated notes real energy and drive.  Yet it is in the 6^th Sonata’s slow movement that Donohoe achieves the most disturbing combination of moments of surface lyricism over dark, ominous harmonies, before showing total command in the relentless toccata-like finale.  There is a darkness throughout these works that is sometimes lost in performances that focus purely on the virtuosic demands – of which there are many – and Donohoe is able to fully exploit the complex undercurrents of these great works. Donohoe recorded the 7^th Sonata a staggering 33 years ago, and then again with the other two War Sonatas in 1991, and these performances were acclaimed at the time.  So he has clearly lived with these sonatas for a long time, and having recorded the other six sonatas in two previous volumes, it is perhaps significant that he has saved the War Sonatas for last in this highly authoritative complete cycle.

Prokofiev, S. 2016. Piano Sonatas volume III. nos. 6, 7 & 8. Peter Donohoe. Compact Disc. Somm SOMMCD 259.

Violinist Tasmin Little has brought three little known works for violin and orchestra by English composers to her latest recording with Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic.  First comes the lyrical Concerto, Op. 80 by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912).  Born in London to a male medical student from Sierra Leone and an English woman, he trained as a violinist and composer from an early age at the Royal College of Music, but in his latter years became successful in the US, where he was rather dubiously dubbed ‘the black Mahler’ on account of his impressive conducting.  His most successful work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, was for many years a staple of British choral societies, yet little of the rest of his music is regularly performed today.  His first version of his Violin Concerto used a number of African-American melodies and spirituals, with a finale based on ‘Yankee Doodle’.  However, he changed his mind, completely rewriting the work using his own melodic material instead. A Dvořák-esque flavour remains, à la New World Symphony, but the touchingly lyrical slow movement has real inspiration. The finale is full of joy and spirit, and Little enjoys the syncopation and use of the violin’s upper reaches here.  Frederick Delius (1862-1934) composed his Suite for Violin and Orchestra in Paris around 1888, and its four movements have a beautiful simplicity in their individual characters.  An opening lyrical Pastorale is followed by a dancing Intermezzo. The song-like Élégie contains some lush brass writing, but this is basically a chance for the violin to sing in an unashamedly romantic fashion – and Little exploits this to the full.  The Finale has a rather conventional feel, with less of an individual Delius voice, but is not without interest. Finally, we have a Concerto from Haydn Wood (1882-1959).  Yorkshire born, he grew up on the Isle of Man, but like Coleridge-Taylor, studied the violin from an early age at the RCM, also studying composition with Stanford. Perhaps more famous for writing songs (eg. Roses of Picardy), musical comedies and light orchestral music, he nevertheless produced a small number of larger scale works, of which the Violin Concerto is one.  This is warm, romantic music, without any edge – yet with moments of deft touch in orchestration, such as the use of harp in the opening movement, and the exquisite horn solo at the beginning of the slow movement leading to the violin’s first entry.  Little is supported throughout by warm and sensitive playing from the BBC Philharmonic, Davis keeping tempi moving to avoid overindulgence.

Various. 2016. Tasmin Little plays Haydn Wood, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Frederick Delius. Tasmin Little, BBC Philharmonic, Sir Andrew Davis. Compact Disc. Chandos CHAN 10879.

(Edited versions of these reviews first appeared in GScene, July 2016)