by Ben Hogwood. Image of the composer in 1945 by Foto von der Fondation Hindemith, Blonay, courtesy of Wikipedia
On this day, 80 years ago, the premiere of a substantial work by Paul Hindemith took place in the New York City Center. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: A Requiem for those we love (An American Requiem) is a setting of a large poem by Walt Whitman, and was commissioned by the conductor Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Chorale cin the wake of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.
Hindemith responded with a setting for alto, baritone, choir and orchestra, and Shaw conducted the premiere. Here is a more recent recording that he made for the Telarc label in 1987, which helped promote the cause of a seldom-heard work that is in fact amongst Hindemith’s finest works:
Robert Simpson String Quartet in D major (1945)a Songs – Trocknet nicht!b; The Cherry Tree (both c1942)b Clarinet Trio (1967)c Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and Three Double Basses (1981)d
Toccata Classics TOCC0701 [70’59’’] English/German texts & English translation included Producer / Engineer Michael Ponder
Recorded c3 June 2021 & d20 November 2023 at St George’s, Pinner View, London; a7 February 2023 at Studio TQHQ, Ruislip; b12 August 2024 at Lehmann Studios, Stuttgart
Released in January 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics issues the first of two releases intended to ‘plug the gaps’ in the survey of Robert Simpson’s chamber music recorded by Hyperion in the 1980s and 1990s, featuring mainly younger musicians who demonstrate keen understanding of this composer’s idiom.
What’s the music like?
Although hardly a cohesive collection as such, this album provides an alternative overview across the greater part of Simpson’s output. Nothing here could be considered inessential, while one of these pieces most likely ranks among his finest compositions from any period.
Composed (and duly accepted) as an examination exercise for Simpson’s Batchelor degree at Durham, the String Quartet in D thereafter remained unpublished and unheard until this recording. At just over 20 minutes, the modest dimensions belie its formal deftness and its expressive subtlety – a trenchant initial Allegro followed by an Adagio where Haydnesque wit makes way for Beethovenian profundity, an ingratiating Allegretto closer to intermezzo than scherzo then a final Presto of an exhilaration effortlessly sustained through to its close.
Simpson was always uneasy with the setting of texts (his two published choral works solve this issue in different though equally ingenious way), but these early settings of Goethe and Housman suggest a distinctive and, moreover, convincing approach which could well have become more so had he persevered. Interestingly, both have an almost confessional quality that the composer, still in his early twenties, might have felt better conveyed in instrumental terms. Something that can never be known for sure, but the attraction of these songs remains.
The late 1960s found Simpson writing two major chamber works with clarinet. The Clarinet Quintet has long been regarded among his finest works, but the slightly earlier Clarinet Trio has seldom been heard and is something of a revelation. From its spellbinding introduction, the initial Allegro makes a virtue of abrupt contrast between impulsiveness and remoteness, with the slow movement a fugitive if searching interlude making the final Allegro the more unequivocal as this builds to a powerful apotheosis offset by the otherness of its closing bars.
Simpson afficionados will be familiar with the Quintet for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and String Trio (Hyperion CDA66626), though maybe not the original incarnation with its three double basses. In fact the musical content sounds, for the most part, better suited to those arresting sonorities – not least the ethereal chorale-like texture of an opening Adagio which, after the mounting energy of a central Allegro, is infused with appreciably greater eloquence on its return and sees the whole work to an ending the more inevitable for its deep-seated repose.
Does it all work?
Pretty much throughout. The present accounts lack little in overall conviction, nor does the sound lack anything in clarity or perspective, while the annotations by Matthew Taylor are as informative as might be expected from one for whom Simpson was a significant mentor.
Is it recommended?
Yes, with the follow-up (Sonata for Two Pianos and Brass Quintet) duly awaited. Incidentally, Taylor recorded the Flute Concerto (with Susan Milan) and Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach for the Simpson centenary in 2021 but which is yet to be released. Maybe this year?
Listen / Buy
You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website
Published post no.2,768 – Thursday 15 January 2026
aJoyful Company of Singers; bAscolta / Peter Broadbent; cFinchley Children’s Music Group / Grace Rossiter with dChristine Hankin (flute); eImogen Barford (harp); fGavin Roberts, gJohn Evanson (pianos)
Havergal Brian Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (1903)a Soul Star (1906)a Come o’er the sea (1907)a Lullaby of an Infant Chief (1906)a Ah! County Guy (1919)cg Violets (1914)b Fair Pledges of a Fruitful Tree (1919)cg Grace for a Child (1914)cg A Song of Willow (1914)bf And will he not come again? (1914)bf Ye spotted snakes (1914)bf Fear no more the heat of the sun (1919)bf Under the greenwood tree (1919)bf Full fathom five (1921)bf Come away, death (1925)af The Blossom (1914)cg The Fly (1914)cg The Little Boy Lost (1914)cg The Little Boy Found (1914)cg Piping down the Valleys Wild (1914)cg The Chimney Sweeper (1914)bf The Little Black Boy (1914)bf Four Choral Songs from Prometheus Unbound (1937-44): From Unremembered Agesa; The Patha; There the Voluptuous Nightingalesade; There those Enchanted Eddiesa Spring – sound the flute (1914)cg Summer has come, Little Children (1914)cg Goodbye to Summer (1914)cg Blow, Blow thou Winter Wind (1925)a
Toccata Classics TOCC0395 [70’59’’] English texts included Producer Michael Ponder Engineer Adaq Khan Recorded a11 & 12 December 2021, c12 &13 March 2022 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London; b26 November 2022 at St Silas, Kentish Town, London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics releases this first in a two-volume survey of Havergal Brian’s choral songs, a versatile medium to which he contributed several dozen items and through which he first established his reputation, before effectively abandoning the medium a quarter-century later.
What’s the music like?
Although best known for his 32 symphonies, solo songs and choral songs dominate Brian’s earlier output. The latter have not fared well in recorded terms – two (the first and last here) being included on an LP from the Stoke-on-Trent Bedford Singers in 1982 (SAIN TRF239), who recorded a larger selection three years on for the Altarus label which only found limited release on cassette in 1991 (British Music Society Environs ENV016). This Toccata album is hence a timely redress for some of Brian’s most attractive and immediately appealing music.
The choral songs fall into three categories. The first consists of part-songs written mainly for the many choral societies from the Midlands and North in the earlier 20th century – reflected in a textural intricacy and harmonic richness which, between them, provide as stern a test of intonation as expected given their provenance in the competitions held regularly at this time. Shakespeare is especially prominent, as too is Robert Herrick, with the translucency of those settings from the 1900s in contrast to the astringency of those following the First World War.
The second category consists of songs, mostly for upper voices and often in unison, written for school or youth choirs. Many date from 1914 when Brian, having left Stoke for London after the collapse of his first marriage, was in financial straits yet their swift turnaround does not make them of lesser quality. William Blake is the main author, tackled with an emotional acuity and technical poise matched by few subsequent composers, while the poignant setting of Gerald Cumberland likely derives from a children’s operetta abandoned around this time.
The third category consists of four semi-choruses taken from a vast setting of Percy Shelley’s lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound (or at least the first two acts) Brian wrote largely during the Second World War. Its full score is long missing, but the vocal score gives due indication of its underlying ambition and overall technical difficulty not least for the chorus. That said, the three unaccompanied items confirm such demands as integral to the musical conception, while the fourth (track 25) features contributions from flute and harp of diaphanous elegance.
Does it all work?
Indeed it does, both in the technical sophistication of part-songs featuring Joyful Company of Singers or the disarming naivety of unison-songs with Finchley Children’s Music Group; directed with assurance by Peter Broadbent or Grace Rossiter, with Gavin Roberts and John Evanson equally adept in their very different piano writing. Moreover, the track sequencing affords a pleasurable listen on its own terms through emphasizing the consistency of Brian’s response to texts which, in themselves, amount to an ‘unofficial’ anthology of English verse.
Is it recommended?
Very much so, not least given the excellent sound with John Pickard contributing a typically authoritative booklet note. Maybe he might yet be persuaded to oversee a re-orchestration of Prometheus Unbound? In the meantime, the second volume of this survey is keenly awaited.
April Fredrick (soprano), Angharad Lyddon (mezzo-soprano), Robert Murray (tenor) Paul Carey Jones (bass), Dr Rowan Williams (narrator); Côr Heol y March, BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales / Adrian Partington
Lyrita SRCD442 [66’41’’] Latin / Welsh text and English translation included Producer / Engineer Adrian Farmer, Engineer Simon Smith
Recorded 20-21 January 2024 at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Lyrita continues its coverage of Grace Williams (1906-1977) with her largest concert work, Missa Cambrensis, in a recent studio recording which confirms it as the defining statement from a composer who, almost half a century since her death, is only now receiving her due.
What’s the music like?
As Paul Conway observes in his typically thorough booklet notes, Missa Cambrensis is one among a number of works by Williams that is Welsh only in a titular sense. Premiered at the Llandaff Festival in 1971, it was well received by fellow composers, critics and public alike but not heard again until 2016 in a performance one recalls as originally intended for release on Lyrita and which can be heard via the composer’s dedicated website. Not that the present account is other than successful in conveying the essence of this powerful yet elusive piece.
Many settings of the Mass since Haydn have unfolded a symphonic trajectory, but Williams goes further with the division into five clearly defined movements. The initial Kyrie Eleison not only introduces most of those salient motifs but also establishes that tone, mystical in its undulating equivocation, such as characterizes this work’s long-term expression: the contrast here between choral and soloistic textures duly accentuated by their hieratic and supplicatory quality. This duly sets up an emotional contrast intensified in the Gloria, outwardly the most straightforward part of the work but with a calmly ecstatic response at Laudamus te then an eloquent Dominus Deus that are nothing if not personal, together with an intensely wrought Cum Sancto Spiritu whose culminating Amen’s convey a distinctly ambivalent affirmation.
As most often, the Credo is the most substantial portion but Williams rings the changes by dividing this into halves, a pertinent division coming at Et homo factus est and Crucifíxus étiam pro nobis. In between are interpolated a setting of Saunders Lewis’s Carol Nadolig (A Christmas Carol) for children’s voices with viola, cello and harp of melting pathos, offset by a starkly narrative treatment of the ‘Beatitudes’ prior to a mostly ruminative resumption of the Credo. Pivoting between contemplation and elation, the Sanctus is rounded off by a joyful Hosánna in excélsis which is not to be heard again after the subdued eloquence of the Benedictus. An anguished response to the Agnus Dei feels the more acute, as also a searching Dona Nobis Pacem which brings the work full circle to its contemplative close.
Does it all work?
Yes, and with an understated while readily identifiable personality that surely makes this the most potent setting of the Mass from a Welsh composer. Subliminal influences might not be hard to discern, among them Britten’s War Requiem, but they never detract from Williams’s own idiom. The soloists cannot be faulted in terms of commitment, with Rowan Williams a notably incisive reciter, while Adrian Partington secures a lustrous response from his choral and orchestral forces. Overall, it is hard to imagine the work given with greater conviction.
Is it recommended?
It is indeed, not least in the hope that further live hearings of Missa Cambrensis may prove forthcoming. Good news, moreover, that Lyrita has now acquired the premiere performance of Williams’s only completed opera, The Parlour, which is scheduled for imminent release.
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