Category Archives: On record

On record: London Symphony Orchestra / François-Xavier Roth – Panufnik Legacies III (LSO Live)

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Panufnik Legacies III:
Ashby Desires (2016)
Campbell Frail Skies (2015)
Giguère Revealing (2015)
Horrocks-Hopayian A Dancing Place (Scherzo) (2010)
Lee Brixton Briefcase (2011)
Morgan-Williams Scoot (2015)
Roth Bone Palace Ballet (2014)
Sergeant but today we collect adds (2008)
Shin In this Valley of Dying Stars (2016)
Siem Ojos Del Cielo (2008)
Taplin Ebbing Tides (2014)
Whitter-Johnson Fairtrade? (2008)

London Symphony Orchestra / François-Xavier Roth

Producer Jonathan Stokes
Engineer Neil Hutchinson
Recorded 26-27 April 2019, LSO St Lukes, London

LSO Live LSO5092 [67’54”]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Operating since 2005, the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme (in memory of the Polish-born British composer) has enabled a generation of aspiring artists to be heard on an international platform, with results that are rarely less than diverting and sometimes not a little compelling.

What’s the music like?

Ayanna Witter-Johnson questions the ethicality of third-world production in the interests of Western consumerism via an eventful while (purposely?) inconclusive interplay of grinding rhythms and ominous harmonies. Ewan Campbell draws on meteorological conditions of the sky for this study of no mean textural and timbral finesse, though what is much the longest piece rather loses focus in its fraught closing stages. Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian toys with concepts derived from Ancient Greek theatre, Classical concepts of democracy and the Marx Brothers in this scherzo whose gender-specific aspects go for little assessed purely as music. Donghoon Shin takes his cue from the nature of stars in a piece whose overtly impressionist elements do not preclude episodes of more purposeful activity, even scintillating virtuosity.

Alex Roth seeks to convey notions of human experience through a diverse orchestral palette – submerged within, an 1888 recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt adds its intriguing temporal resonance. Matthew Sergeant draws on disparate objects displayed at a 1953 exhibition for a sequence of vignettes whose unforeseen interconnectedness results in unlikely yet engaging variations on the initial premise. Patrick Giguère seems intent on conveying that process of ‘revealing’ less as a reduction in musical layers as of accessing the essence of the composer, which proves worthwhile more in theory than in practice. Sasha Siem takes up the notion of ‘‘the eyes of a person who is absent or no longer there’’ for a piece where the struggle of a melody to break into the foreground creates palpable tension in the shortest of these pieces.

Bethan Morgan-Williams gives preference to clarinets in music whose sudden transformation from nonchalance to anxiety is achieved with appealing verve and an ultimately barbed irony. Michael Taplin has contributed a study in (as its title suggests) emergence and evanescence such as the orchestra is well equipped to convey, provided that the music does not outstay its welcome. Benjamin Ashby seeks to reconcile opposites – namely those of the flesh and of the spirit – in a process where understated antagonisms (inevitably?) seems rather more arresting than even their tentative reconciliation. Finally, Joanna Lee draws upon memories of cassette players (presumably those formerly referred to as ‘ghetto-blasters’) that frequently enlivened inner-city environs during the 1980s, albeit with greater visceral impact than is evident here.

Does it all work?

Mostly, and not least because François-Xavier Roth draws playing of unstinting commitment from the London Symphony Orchestra. His support for the Panufnik Composers Scheme has been a primary factor in its success over the past 15 years and will doubtless continue to be so.

Is it recommended?

Yes, notwithstanding a relative lack of underlying rhythmic energy or cumulative momentum with almost all these pieces. Anyone interested in sampling what is on offer should head to the Shin, Sergeant or Siem pieces (though not necessarily in that order!) then proceed from there.

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For further information, audio clips and purchase information visit the LSO Live website

On record – Peter Dickinson: Chamber & Instrumental Music (Toccata Classics)

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Peter Dickinson
Violin Sonata (1961)
Air for solo violin (1959)
Metamorphosis for solo violin (1955, rev 1971)
String Quartet no. 1 (1958)
Fantasia for solo violin (1959)
Lullaby for violin and piano (1967)
String Quartet No. 2 (1976)
Quintet Melody for solo violin (1956)
Tranquillo for violin and piano (1986, rev. 2018)

*Peter Sheppard Skaerved (violin); **Roderick Chadwick (piano); ***Kreutzer Quartet [Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Mihailo Trandafilovski (violins), Clifton Harrison (viola), Neil Heyde (cello)]

Toccata Classics TOCC0538 [71’26”]

Producer Peter Sheppard Skaerved
Engineer Jonathan Haskell

Recorded 27 July & 29 November 2017, 16 January & 26 March 2019

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics turns its attention to Peter Dickinson (b.1934), whose impeccably crafted and stylistically wide-ranging music has enhanced British music over almost seven decades – not least these chamber and instrumental works that are all recorded here for the first time.

What’s the music like?

Dickinson might consider the Violin Sonata to be among his more challenging works, but its serial technique is subtly embedded into outer Fast movements whose rhythmic tensility has an engagingly Bartókian impetus, while the central Slow movement alludes to Greensleeves near the start of its spare yet eloquent and at times impassioned course. At the other end of the scale, Lullaby is one of several warmly attractive and immediately accessible pieces derived from the abandoned opera The Unicorns, while Tranquillo is a recasting of part of the central section from the Violin Concerto (recorded on Heritage HTGCD276 along with concertos for organ and piano) Dickinson wrote as an In memoriam to Ralph Holmes – with whom he often gave recitals, not least of Beethoven’s Spring Sonata which makes a belated appearance here.

Dickinson’s output for solo violin is hardly less significant – whether with the folk-inflected plaintiveness of Air or the deftly accruing velocity of Metamorphosis (that both were initially conceived for flute makes this idiomatic new guise the more striking). More ambitious is the Fantasia with its grandly (but never wantonly) rhetorical gestures and vaunting passagework that aptly evokes the skyline of New York – in which city the composer studied during 1958-61, a time of considerable social and cultural upheaval. No less affecting despite (or perhaps because of?) its brevity, Quintet Melody is all that has survived from a quintet written when a Cambridge undergraduate. Dickinson has composed music for solo instruments throughout his composing career, of which those featured here constitute some of the most appealing.

Surprising that Dickinson’s string quartets have only now received their first recordings. The First Quartet opens with an intensively argued Allegro whose energy is the more palpable for its formal concentration, then the haunting ‘night music’ overtones of the central Lento – not least its quietly ecstatic solos and trenchant rhythmic ostinatos – carry over to a final Allegro whose ‘misterioso’ marking denotes its speculative progress to an eruptive climax and highly equivocal close. Unfolding as an eventful and often ingenious single movement, the Second Quartet evokes Ives in the way strings wend their leisurely yet methodical way to a rendition of the ‘rag’ that piano – heard on tape – has been sounding fragmentarily all the while. That this arrival is anything but decisive only makes the process of getting there more intriguing.

Does it all work?

It does, not least as Dickinson is a master of ‘less is more’. The longest of these pieces is little over 15 minutes in length, but this does not detract from the variety of incident and expression that the composer has invested into their content – not to mention their technical challenges.

Is it recommended?

It is, given the all-round excellence of the performances and the ideal ambience in which they have been recorded. A fluent author, Dickinson’s own observations on each piece are nothing if not apposite, and it is to be hoped that a follow-up disc might yet emerge from this source.

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You can discover more about this release at the Toccata Classics website, where you can also purchase the recording.

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You can read about Peter Dickinson at his website

On record – Roderick Williams, Michael Dussek & Bridge Quartet: Those Blue Remembered Hills (EM Records)

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Gurney
The Western Playland (and of Sorrow) (1920)
Edward, Edward (1914)
By A Bierside (1916)
String Quartet in D minor (1924-5)
Howells
There was a Maiden (1915)
Girl’s Song (1916)
King David (1919)
The Mugger’s Song (1919)

Roderick Williams (baritone), Michael Dussek (piano), Bridge Quartet [Colin Twigg, Catherine Schofield (violins), Michael Schofield (viola), Lucy Wilding (cello)]

EM Records EMR CD065 [80’52”]

Producer Rupert Marshall-Luck
Engineer Patrick Allen

Recorded 4 & 5 June 2018 at Potton Hall, Suffolk

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The latest release from EM Records is largely devoted to music by Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), including the second of his song-cycles with ensemble and the first recording of a large-scale string quartet composed before encroaching mental illness led to a cessation of his creativity.

What’s the music like?

Time was when Gurney was viewed as a poet who also wrote songs, but recent research has unearthed piano music, two orchestral pieces and numerous chamber works. Just how much he wrote and destroyed in a period of activity through to 1927 will probably never be known.

It was the success of Ludlow and Teme (recorded on EMRCD036) which led Gurney to essay a second song-cycle after A. E. Housman. Equally well received, The Western Playland was revised in 1925, when (and of Sorrow) was added to the title as if to point up that emotional dislocation the composer felt when incarcerated at City of London Mental Hospital – far from his beloved Gloucestershire. The eight songs traverse a wide expressive range, with such as a limpid setting of Loveliest of Trees and a purposeful take on Is my Team Ploughing very different in manner yet comparable in quality to those by Butterworth or Vaughan Williams. The forced jollity of the initial Reveille strikes a slightly jarring note, but the final March conjures a luminous poise which is further enhances by its extended instrumental postlude.

Also featured are two of Gurney’s songs with piano – that of the anonymous ballad Edward, Edward summons a malevolence that finds natural contrast with the sombre wartime (indeed, trench-bound) setting of John Masefield’s By a Bierside. Four songs by Herbert Howells are a reminder of the close personal and regional ties between these composers – three of which are appealing in their craftsmanship, with the setting of Walter de la Mare’s King David as affecting as any song from this period and justifiably receiving of the poet’s endorsement.

The centrepiece here is a String Quartet in D minor – one of several written during Gurney’s incarceration and which, fortunately for posterity, he was able to hear performed thanks to the redoubtable musicologist Marion M. Scott. Extensive revisions made deciphering his ultimate intentions more difficult, but the time and effort has been well worthwhile. The EMR release referred to above contains the original version of the work’s Adagio, and the revision as heard here only intensifies its anguished pathos. This, along with the ruminative ensuing intermezzo, are the highlights of an ambitious entity – the motivic ingenuity of whose opening movement feels undermined by lack of textural or rhythmic clarity; this latter failing arguably inhibiting the vehemence and drama which otherwise inform the finale as it surges to its fatalistic close.

Does it all work?

Almost. Roderick Williams is at his perceptive best in the songs, sensitively accompanied by Michael Dussek. The Bridge Quartet is superb in the song-cycle and makes a fine effort in the quartet, of which further performances are needed to assess the full extent of its achievement.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Gurney is a composer whose stature has only latterly become apparent, and to which this disc is a signal contribution. Spacious and natural sound balance, together with detailed and often insightful annotations, further enhance what is another indispensable EMR release.

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You can discover more about this release at the EM Records website, where you can hear clips from the recording and also purchase.

On record: Steve Elcock: Orchestral Music, Volume Two (Toccata)

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Steve Elcock
Incubus Op.28 (2017)
Haven: Fantasia on a Theme by J.S. Bach Op.4 (1995, rev. 2011-17)
Symphony no.5 Op.21 (2014)

Siberian Symphony Orchestra / Dmitry Vasiliev

Producer/Engineer Sergei Zhiganov
Recorded 8-12 July 2019, Philharmonic Hall, Omsk

Toccata Classics TOCC0445 [77’20”]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its coverage of Steve Elcock (b1957) with this second instalment of orchestral music – dominated by the Fifth Symphony with provocative allusions to its most famous predecessor, together with shorter yet distinctive pieces from either end of his output.

What’s the music like?

Although it marks a return to the four-movement format of his first two such works, the Fifth Symphony is hardly conventional in formal or expressive follow through. As with the almost contemporaneous Fifth by the late Christopher Rouse, the presence of that archetypal ‘No. 5’ feels undeniable – even more so given Elcock’s explicit referencing at the start of each outer movement; a head-on approach hardly less confrontational than that with Beethoven Nine in Tippett’s Third Symphony a half-century ago. In all other respects, Elcock goes entirely his own way: the visceral charge of that beginning quickly subsides into an opening movement whose restive searching seems becalmed emotionally while not tonally, as the music strives increasingly to regain its initial energy before relapsing into a mood of pervasive desolation.

The next two movements unfold without pause as a contrasting duality. As its title suggests, the Ostinato builds explosive impetus over a remorseless rhythmic motto that climactically implodes to leave a musing clarinet melody as expands into the ensuing Canzonetta. Less a slow movement than extended intermezzo, what might have brought a return to the earlier sombreness rather assumes a more compassionate aura that makes possible the final Allegro. Comparable to the first movement in its scale, this unfolds as a sonata design of unflagging dynamism whose twin themes are drawn into a process of continuous development on route to a peroration which, though it could hardly evince the triumph of Beethoven, is never less than affirmative in its bringing the work decisively and, moreover, demonstrably full circle.

A notable achievement, then – less ruggedly distinctive if ultimately more cohesive than the Third Symphony (recorded on TOCC0400), and evidently a statement with which to reckon. It is preceded here by two pieces that further attest to the consistency of Elcock’s underlying vision. Haven: Fantasia on a Theme by J.S. Bach takes the Sarabande from the First Violin Partita as basis for a series less of variations than of paraphrases such as pass from nostalgia, through militaristic brutality, to renewed concord with the theme newly explicit at the close. Derived from a recent string quartet, Incubus is a study in nocturnal imaginings – ostensibly the result of insomnia – which seems predictable only in its marshalling a disparate range of ideas into a taut ‘curtain raiser’ whose outcome is the more telling for being so unexpected.

Does it all work?

It does. Just occasionally taxed in those more demonstrative passages, the Siberian Symphony Orchestra otherwise yields little to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic as to the conviction of its playing, with Dmitry Vasiliev demonstrating an absolute grasp of Elcock’s combative musical vision.

Is it recommended?

It is. Orchestral sound has commendable heft and perspective, while Francis Pott’s extensive annotations situate all three pieces within an appropriately wide context. Hopefully Elcock’s Fourth Symphony will feature on the next volume in what is an absorbing and valuable series.

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For further information, audio clips and purchase information visit the Toccata Classics website. For more on Steve Elcock you can visit the composer’s website

On record – Alexander Tcherepnin: My Flowering Staff (Toccata Classics)

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Alexander Tcherepnin My Flowering Staff (1912-13)

Inna Dukach (soprano), Tatyana Kebuladze (piano), with Paul Whelan (bass) Acmeist Male Choir

Toccata Classics TOCC0537 [57’55”] Russian (Cyrillic) text and translation included

Producer/Engineer Jeremy Gerard

Recorded 21-23 June 2017, 29 December 2018 and 4 January 2019 at the Gurari Studios, National Opera Center, New York City

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics comes up with another first in My Flowering Staff, a song-cycle of almost an hour’s length by Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977), most of whose content was divided across three separate collections and has only now been returned to its original conception.

What’s the music like?

His reputation established initially through his piano music (a representative selection from which, including several archival recordings by the composer, can be found on TOCC0079), Tcherepnin worked intensively on setting this volume of lyrics by Sergei Gorodetsky (1884-1967) during 1920-21, before he summarily abandoned the project with three texts awaiting music. Instead, he published 24 of these songs – albeit to French translation – as his Opp. 15, 16 and 17, then never returned to the song format on such a scale. The other songs remained unheard until 2018, by which time the original Russian texts of the published items had been restored and the undeniable ambition of Tcherepnin’s vision could be more readily adduced.

Not that adducing such a vision is therefore straightforward. Gorodetsky may have reined-in his more abstruse symbolism when he penned these 38 lyrics during 1912-13, but a tendency towards inward communing is seldom far away and it could be precisely this obscurity which attracted Tcherepnin in the first instance; enabling him to align his own preoccupations with the passage from youth to maturity, and from innocence to experience, with the poet’s own ruminations. Anyone expecting a continuity of narrative akin to the song-cycles of Schubert will only be disappointed, yet the fervency of Tcherepnin’s approach is its own justification.

Stylistically, too, these songs exude those attributes of inward ecstasy and ominous anxiety as Tcherepnin’s older contemporaries had previously found in this poet. Vocal lines tend toward the declamatory and have recourse to a wide compass, while the piano writing is harmonically questing without becoming congested or unidiomatic (hence the imposing solo that precedes the 22nd poem) – a consequence of his mastery over this instrument whether as composer or performer. The expressive ambit is opened-out with a setting of the 16th poem for bass and (optional) male chorus, while the overall cycle is framed by an Epigraph and Epilogue which distil those qualities of yearning and fulfilment that dominate the cycle as a whole. Whether Tcherepnin thought its execution to have fallen short of its ambition cannot now be answered.

Does it all work?

Almost, though it is not always easy to perceive the formal trajectory Tcherepnin was intent on pursuing or to what expressive end it was directed. That said, the omitted songs are quite the equal of those he did publish and to hear them all in sequence affords its own fascination. It helps when Inna Dukach renders the overall cycle with just the right alternation of plangent rhetoric or confiding intimacy and receives astute accompaniment from Tatyana Kebuladze. Nor are Paul Whelan and Acmeist Male Choir found wanting in their solitary contribution.

Is it recommended?

Yes, given the conviction of this performance and excellence of recorded sound. Benjamin Folkman’s detailed annotations go a long way to elucidating Tcherepnin’s conception, while Dina Dukach’s English translation similarly clarifies many aspects of Gorodetsky’s musings.

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You can discover more about this release at the Toccata Classics website, where you can also purchase the recording.