Category Archives: Orchestral

On Record – James Turnbull, Poppy Beddoe, Mira Marton, BBC NoW / Matthew Taylor: Matthew Taylor: Orchestral Music Vol.2 (Toccata Classics)

Posted on by
Reply

James Turnbull (oboe), Poppy Beddoe (clarinet), Mira Marton (violin), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Matthew Taylor

Matthew Taylor
Symphony no.6 Op.62 (2021)
Oboe Concerto Op.60 (2020-21)
Clarinet Concertino Op.63 (2021)
Violin Concertino Op.52 (2016)

Toccata Classics TOCC0708 [69’32’’]
Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Andrew Smillie
Recorded 17 & 18 December 2022 in Hoddinott Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its now extensive coverage of Matthew Taylor (b.1964) with this coupling of his most recent symphony alongside three of his concertante pieces, two of them here played by the soloists for whom they were written and all with the composer conducting.

What’s the music like?

Those familiar with Taylor’s symphonic output will recall that the Fifth ended with an adagio of powerfully inward emotion, and the Sixth Symphony picks up on this directly. Dedicated to the memory of Malcolm Arnold in the year of his centenary, it is his contemporary Robert Simpson (a pervasive influence on Taylor’s formative years) who comes most to mind in an opening movement whose alternation between relative darkness and lightness is informed by a gradually cumulative momentum the more striking given this music’s textural transparency.

The second of three continuous movements centres on a fugal theme of affecting poise, one whose transformation is made more so by orchestration where piano and harp confirm their substantive rather than merely colouristic roles. Only with the finale does Arnold’s presence assert itself – the jazzy cast of its clarinet theme facilitating allusions to, if not quotations of, several of this composer’s salient works prior to a culmination that, launched by a crescendo of mounting anticipation, rounds off the whole work with a decidedly no-nonsense terseness.

Of the other pieces, the Oboe Concerto is most substantial. Imaginatively scored for Haydn-esque forces, with cors anglais instead of oboes, it inverts the expected order of movements with the first of these featuring a central section whose intermezzo-like deftness offsets the sombreness either side. There follows a Scherzo which further develops the primary motifs with dextrous virtuosity, before an Adagio affords not just closure but a sense of fulfilment   through the emotional raptness such as pervades this most eloquent among Taylor’s finales.

Taylor having earlier written concertos for clarinet and violin, the present works are lighter in their overall mood but not slighter in actual content. Thus, the Violin Concertino intersperses respectively trenchant and lively outer sections with an ‘aria’ of wistful elegance, whereas the Clarinet Concertino frames its pert amalgam of slow movement and scherzo with an Andante of autumnal repose then a finale of artless naivety. Brahms is mentioned in the latter instance, though the late woodwind sonatas of Saint-Saëns and Poulenc might be felt equally apposite.

Does it all work?

It does, and not only because of Taylor’s sill in writing from a soloistic or orchestral vantage. Each of the concertante pieces confirms his feeling for the instrument in question, while the symphony reaffirms his status among the leading exponents of this genre from the past half-century. The three soloists are audibly attuned to his music, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales continues the favourable impression it made with his Fourth Symphony (recorded by Kenneth Woods on Nimbus NI6406) by similarly responding to the composer’s direction.

Is it recommended?

It is, and not least when the booklet features informative notes by Taylor himself. This release is dedicated to the memory of Tom Hammond (1974-2021), trombonist and conductor whose untimely death deprived the musical world of a gifted musician and exemplary human being.

Listen & Buy

You can listen to samples and explore purchase options on the Toccata Classics website Click on the names for more on artists James Turnbull, Poppy Beddoe and Mira Marton, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and composer / conductor Matthew Taylor

Published post no.2,219 – Monday 24 June 2024

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

Posted on by
Reply

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…

Posted on by
1

…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…

Posted on by
Reply

…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)

Posted on by
Reply

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