Category Archives: Orchestral

On Record – BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins, Sir Andrew Davis – Payne: Visions and Journeys (NMC)

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BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins, Sir Andrew Davis (Visions and Journeys)

Anthony Payne
Orchestral Variations: The Seeds Long Hidden (1992-4)
Half-Heard in the Stillness (1987)
Visions and Journeys (2002)

NMC D281 [62’15’’]
Producers Philip Tagney, Ann McKay (Visions and Journeys) Engineers Simon Hancock, Philip Burwell (Visions and Journeys)
Broadcast performances on 22 September 2006, Maida Vale Studios, London; live performance 9 August 2002 Royal Albert Hall, London (Visions and Journeys)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

NMC issues a tribute to Anthony Payne (1936-2021) featuring three of the most representative among his mature orchestral works and so makes for a viable overview, featuring an orchestra and conductors who between them gave numerous performances of his music in his lifetime.

What’s the music like?

Earliest here is Half-Heard in the Stillness, a short yet evocative tone poem making use of the Memorial Chimes which Elgar wrote for the Loughborough carillon in 1923. By this stage in his career, Payne had evolved an idiom that effortlessly but meaningfully elides between post -war Modernism and a late Romanticism (not necessarily British in derivation) such as gives his later output its tonal and expressive lustre. The outcome is ‘landscape’ music that intimates far more than it states, to an extent which the senior composer would surely have appreciated.

Most extensive of these pieces, The Seeds Long Hidden is a sequence of orchestral variations which outlines an autobiographical trajectory. Other than the opening gesture from Brahms’s First Symphony (a hearing of which in 1947 determined the course of Payne’s life thereafter), the works alluded to over the course of its 10 variations are not quoted directly but rather flit across the music and so inform the context from which the ‘theme’ variously emerges. While there is a constant and productive eddying between relative stasis and dynamism, moreover, the overall cumulative thrust seems one of clarification towards an emotional climax of self-realization which quickly recedes into the calm equivocation of the closing bars. If this is, as the composer states, a ‘musical autobiography’, it is an overtly self-effacing and oblique one.

As the first major work that Payne wrote in the aftermath of his realization of Elgar’s ‘Third Symphony’, Visions and Journeys is inevitably bound up with the re-establishing of his own idiom: a statement of intent to be pursued over what became the final phase of his creativity. Nominally inspired by frequent journeys he and his wife – the soprano Jane Manning – made to the Isles of Scilly, this is in no sense pictorial or illustrative in intent. That said, its overall follow-through from unforced anticipation, via understated fulfilment, to underlying regret could not otherwise have been made explicit; the degree to which this is transcended being both the music’s purpose and its primary fascination. A blueprint, indeed, for the select few works that were to come and which reinforced Payne’s standing as a composer of substance.

Does it all work?

Yes, as long as one approaches these works not as compromise between competing aesthetic tendencies but as their synthesis in music which is often eloquent and always appealing. The playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra could hardly be bettered, with Martyn Brabbins and the late Sir Andrew Davis always committed in their advocacy. Occupying that amorphous middle-ground between the rarified and accessible, Payne’s music neither rejects nor courts popularity but the rewards are considerable for those willing to spend time in its company.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, in the hope a follow-up release which features Spirit’s Harvest (initially intended for inclusion here) and Payne’s culminative statement Of Land, Sea and Sky may yet be possible. The composer’s introductory notes explain everything while giving absolutely nothing away.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the NMC website. For further information, click on the names for more on Martyn Brabbins, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and composer Anthony Payne

Published post no.2,218 – Sunday 23 June 2024

Another serenade for an early summer evening…

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…this time in the form of one of the most charming works by Johannes Brahms, his Serenade no.1 in D major. An early work – published as Op.11 – it is full of good tunes and has a sunny disposition. Here it is in a performance on period instruments, with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan:

Published post no.2,211 – Sunday 16 June 2024

A serenade for an early summer evening…

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…in the form of an early work by Sir Edward Elgar. Here is his Serenade for Strings in E minor Op.20, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Groves:

Published post no.2,204 – Sunday 9 June 2024

On Record – Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Elcock: Violin Concerto, Symphony no.8 (Nimbus)

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Zoë Beyers (violin), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Elcock
Violin Concerto Op.13 (1996-2003, rev. 2020)
Symphony no.8 Op.37 (1981/2021)

Nimbus NI6446 [56’24’’]
Producer and Engineer Phil Rowlands
Recorded 28 July 2021 (Symphony), 26 May 2022 (Violin Concerto) at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods add to their much lauded 21st Century Symphony Project with this release devoted to Steve Elcock (b.1957), juxtaposing two major works which confirm his standing among the leading European symphonists of his generation.

What’s the music like?

Both works heard here only gradually assumed their definitive form. Composed at stages over almost a decade, the Violin Concerto marks something of a transition between less ambitious pieces for local musicians and those symphonic works which have come to dominate Elcock’s output. Its initial Allegro vivo is a tensile sonata design whose rhythmic energy is maintained throughout, with enough expressive leeway for its second theme to assume greater emotional emphasis in the reprise. There follows a Molto tranquillo whose haunting main theme, at first unfolded by the soloist over undulating upper strings in a texture pervaded by change-ringing techniques, is a potent inspiration. A pavane-like idea soon comes into focus while the closing stage, reaching an eloquent plateau before it evanesces into silence, stays long in the memory. The short but eventful finale is a Passacaglia whose theme (audibly related to previous ideas) accelerates across five variations from Andante to Presto, before culminating in a heightened cadenza-like passage on violin and timpani then a peremptory yet decisive orchestral pay-off.

The Eighth Symphony has its antecedents even further back, having begun as a string quartet in the early 1980s, though it continues those processes of evolution and integration central to the seven such works which precede it. It reflects the impact of the Sixth Symphony by Allan Pettersson (still awaiting its UK premiere after 58 years), but whereas that epic work centres on fateful arrival, Elcock’s single movement is more about striving towards a destination that remains tantalizingly beyond reach. Numerous pithy motifs are stated in the formative stages, as the music alternates between relative stasis and dynamism before being thrown into relief by the emergence (just before the mid-point) of a trumpet melody that goes on to determine the course of this piece as it builds inexorably towards a sustained climax then subsides into a searching postlude. Overt resolution may have been eschewed, yet the overriding sense of cohesion and inevitability duly outweighs that mood described by the composer as ‘‘one of desperation in the teeth of impending catastrophe’’ which, in itself, becomes an affirmation.

Does it all work?

Certainly, given both works receive well prepared and finely realized performances – notable for the way Elcock’s demanding yet idiomatic string writing is realized with real conviction. The concerto is a tough challenge for any soloist and one Zoë Beyers meets with assurance – its close-knit interplay of soloist and orchestra brought off with admirable precision, and its occasional modal subtleties rendered as enrichments of the tonal trajectory. Elcock has been fortunate in his recorded exponents, and this new ESO release is emphatically no exception.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, and good to hear that, as the ESO’s current John McCabe Composer-in-Association, Elcock will feature on a follow-up issue of his pieces Wreck and Concerto Grosso, along with the recent Fermeture. For now, this latest release warrants the strongest of recommendations.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the Naxos Direct website. For further information on the artists, click on the names for more on Zoë Beyers, the English Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Kenneth Woods. Click on the name for more on composer Steve Elcock

Published post no.2,182 – Saturday 18 May 2024

On Record – Peter Herresthal, Arctic Philharmonic, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra – Missy Mazzoli: Dark with Excessive Bright (BIS)

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abfPeter Herresthal (violin); bMembers of Arctic Philharmonic [Oganes Girunyan, Øyvind Mehus (violins), Natalya Girunyan (viola), Mary Auner (cello), Ingvild Maria Mehus (double bass)]; cdeArctic Philharmonic / Tim Weiss; aBergen Philharmonic Orchestra / James Gaffigan

Mazzoli
Dark with Excessive Bright (2021 – versions with string orchestra (a) and string quintet (b)). Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (2013)c
These Worlds in Us (2021)d
Orpheus Undone (2021)e
Vespers for Violin (2014)f

BIS BIS-2572 [66’22’’]
Producers Jørn Pedersen, Hans Kipfer Engineers Gunnar Herfel Nilsen, Håkan Ekman

Recorded 4 June 2021 (a) at Grieghallen, Bergen; March 2022 at Storman Concert Hall, Bodø

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

BIS issues the first release to be devoted to the orchestral output of Missy Mazzoli (b.1980), New York-based and firmly established among the most significant opera composers of her generation, recorded with a stellar cast of musicians at venues on the west coast of Norway.

What’s the music like?

In his prefatory note, American author Garth Greenwell characterizes Mazzoli’s music thus – ‘‘Each piece is a journey no step of which is forgotten, so one arrives in a place that feels at once familiar and absolutely new’’, which seems a fair description of its audible connection with the past while, at the same time, absorbing accrued influences into an idiom wholly of today. That each of the works bears this out, albeit in different ways and with unpredictable outcomes, says much about the effectiveness of her modus operandi these past two decades.

Earliest here is These Worlds in Us – its title drawn from a poem by James Tate concerning the wartime death of his father, leading to music whose interplay between feelings of pain and elation is abetted by a tightly focussed evolution. An identical duration aside, Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) could hardly be more removed in its formal corollary to that of the solar system; such abstraction offset by the ‘sinfonia’ connotations with a Medieval hurdy-gurdy whose modal drone, recreated here on an electronic keyboard, underlies the headily increasing velocity of this piece. Nominally the paraphrase of a larger work, Vespers for Violin combines solo violin with an electronic soundtrack where overtones of keyboards, voices and strings subsumed into a texture such as proves at once rarified and evocative.

Framing this release are two versions of the title-track. Having started out as a concerto for double bass and strings, Dark with Excessive Bright was reworked for violin at the request of Peter Herresthal – a quotation from Milton being the catalyst for a piece that refashions Baroque techniques from a present-day vantage, and one which succeeds equally well with orchestral strings or string quintet. Most compelling, though, is Orpheus Undone – a suite whose two movements (respectively 10 and five minutes) open-out that emotional trauma    of Eurydice’s death with a methodical while always cumulative inexorability as to suggest that Mazzoli could distinguish herself in the symphonic domain were she to take time-out from that of opera. Certainly, one of the most absorbing orchestral pieces of recent years.

Does it all work?

Pretty much always, though the composer is fortunate to have had such advocacy from the musicians heard here. Herresthal reaffirms his standing as go-to violinist for new music, his playing as subtle and as resourceful as this concerto requires. The much in-demand James Gaffigan gets luminous playing from the Bergen Philharmonic, as does Tim Weiss from the Arctic Philharmonic of whose Sinfonietta he is artistic director. Sound of spaciousness and clarity, along with succinctly informative notes by the composer, are further enhancements.

Is it recommended?

It is, and those suitably drawn into Mazzoli’s sound-world are encouraged to check out other releases – notably the powerful and unsettling opera Proving Up (Pentatone PTC5186754) or the endlessly thought-provoking Vespers for a New Dark Age (New Amsterdam NWAM062).

Listen

Buy

You can explore purchase options for this recording at the Presto website. Click on the names for more on the artists – Peter Herresthal, Tim Weiss, James Gaffigan, Arctic Philharmonic and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra – and for more on the composer Missy Mazzoli

Published post no.2,174 – Friday 9 May 2024