by Ben Hogwood Picture courtesy ALMA – ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, E/O’Gorman/P.Kervella
A report on the Guardian website today asks why the great red giant star Betelgeuse is glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely. It is a fascinating read, and its remarkable conclusion is a reminder that the light we see from the star is actually 600 years old.
It brought to mind a setting by Gustav Holst of a great poem about the star by Humbert Wolfe. This is a highly unusual song, proceeding such a slow speed that the age of the star is never in doubt. Here it is, sung by tenor Philip Langridge with pianist Steuart Bedford:
There is only one tune to start the day with today…and it’s the Eurovision anthem – or, as it is known in classical circles, the Prélude to Marc-André Charpentier’s Te Deum. Written in the final decade of the 17th century, this bright opener has shown itself to be an incredibly versatile piece of music, capable of beginning a larger-scale sacred piece but equally well-suited as a fanfare for trumpet and organ, or organ alone.
You can hear it in its original context – followed by the whole of the Te Deum…
If you’d prefer, here is the Prélude on its own:
Now, though, it is treasured as the music we hear before a certain singing contest gets underway – so without further ado, let’s celebrate!
Juliet Fraser (voice and Casio keyboard), Mark Knoop (piano and electronics)
Another Timbre AT210 [55’15”]
Producer Mark Knoop Engineer Newton Armstrong
Recorded 17 December 2022 at City, University of London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Another Timbre issues a follow-up to its two-volume overview of Laurence CraneChamber Works 1992-2009 (AT74x2) with Natural World, his longest work to date, performed by the artists who commissioned it and making an essential addition to the composer’s discography.
What’s the music like?
Older readers may recall the children’s TV programme Mr Ben, where the shopkeeper appears from nowhere. Such is the impression made by Crane’s music, which exists as if awaiting the listener’s recognition. From his early pieces – often brief and frequently for piano – his output has gradually expanded to embrace larger concepts and ensembles, resulting in such works as Octet (2008) and the Second Chamber Symphony (2016). Natural World (2021) might seem a throwback in its intimacy and understatement, but its impact conveys a wholly different story.
This might appear a song-cycle for voice and piano, but their deployment is hardly beholden to precedent. Crane has spoken of his aversion to ‘setting’ poems such that their meaning is distorted, and Natural World uses texts whose neutrality ensures an objectivity of response.
Unfolding as an unbroken span, the work falls into three distinct and designated sections. The first of these, Field Guide, draws on various authors (not least Crane himself) along with marine biologist Rachel Carson in terms of her classifications and observations – proceeding from a lengthy introduction for piano to an increasingly intricate and nuanced interplay with the voice Field recordings of individual birds gradually interpose so that the closing phase is dominated by that of the Dawn Chorus, its complexity the more affecting for not being the outcome of any (self-)conscious creativity.
The second section, Chorus, is the shortest and effectively an interlude that continues with the above as context for a sequence of piano chords and a vocalise whose curving, glissando-like phrases engender an expressive response without this ever becoming explicit or emotive. Such a response is intensified in the third section, Seascape, that includes a further field recording of the ocean – the voice emerging with a text on the innate fragility of ecosystems. Underpinning this is a sustained electronic tone comparable to those on electronic keyboard to which Crane has often had recourse. Here, it serves to envelop the aural picture and so intensify the musical content without this becoming a ‘message’ in any cultural or political sense: listeners being left free to determine their responses to this music.
Does it all work?
Absolutely. Crane has long been a master of musical continuity, such that the extent of this piece is imbued with a tension sustained and unfaltering. It helps that the performers are so attuned to his creative wavelength – Juliet Fraser articulating the vocal part with unforced clarity and poise, complemented by Mark Knoop’s adroit handling of piano and electronics. As on that earlier release from Another Timbre, the close but never constricted sound is ideal in terms of the immediacy brought to Crane’s music which seems never less than absorbing.
Is it recommended?
Indeed. As is usual from this source, there are no booklet notes but a revealing interview with the composer can be accessed at AT’s website. Those who are new to Crane should also check out previous collections of his music issued on the Hubro, LAWO, Metier and Nimbus labels.
Don Banks Horn Trio (1962) a Five North Country Folk Songs (1953) b Prologue, Night Piece and Blues (1968) c Three Studies (1954) d Piano Sonatina in C sharp minor (1948) e Violin Sonata (1953) f Tirade (1968) g
(bg) Jenny Duck-Chong (mezzo-soprano), (c) Francesco Celata (clarinet), (a) Robert Johnson (horn), (af) Ole Böhn (violin), (d) Geoffrey Gartner (cello), (g): Rowan Phemister (harp), David Kim-Boyle (siren), Alison Pratt, Daryl Pratt, Joshua Hill (percussion), Daniel Herscovitch (piano)
Toccata Classics TOCC0591 [81’34″]
Producer David Kim-Boyle Engineer David Kinney
Recorded (cdf) 21 September (ag) 24 September and (be) 5 November 2020 at Recital Hall West, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics provides a strong case for the greater recognition of Don Banks (1923-80) with this release of a representative cross-section of vocal and chamber works, performed by Australian and Australia-based musicians who are never less than empathetic with his music.
What’s the music like?
Wholly neglected following his untimely death, Banks was a senior figure in the generation of Australian composers – featuring such as Malcolm Williamson, David Lumsdaine and Nigel Butterley – who posited a decisive if hardly uniform course for the country’s music during the post-war era. Based in London for two decades, he made a living through teaching (notably at Goldsmith’s College) or writing music for horror films (notably Hammer productions), while evolving an increasingly personal language which can be heard in those works included here.
Earliest is the Piano Sonatina whose three movements – an agile Allegro, pensive Largo that nimbly amalgamates elements of fugue and chorale, then an impulsive Risoluto – constitute no mean statement of intent. It was the Violin Sonata which Banks considered his Op. 1, its pithy if contrasted ideas drawn into intensive development that effortlessly sustains a single movement whose 15 minutes seem never less than eventful. More unexpected is his identity with traditional sources in Five North Country Folk Songs (written for Sophie Wyss no less), whose piano accompaniments enhance the sentiment of each text with deadpan humour and audible affection. Reflecting his time spent with Dallapiccola (and, by extension, Webern), Three Studies for cello and piano applies its serial thinking both deftly and resourcefully.
By the 1960s, Banks had fashioned an idiom that was demonstrably but never slavishly of its time. One of the finest instances is the Horn Trio that, for all its inherent abstraction, pursues a tangible emotional trajectory from its forceful opening Allegro, via an Adagio of no mean eloquence, to a final Moderato in which the work’s arresting slow introduction is transformed through hunt-like gestures. Conversely, Prologue, Night Piece and Blues for Two underlines his love for jazz and its deployment within a ‘third stream’ context; here, the music’s restraint affords a sultriness alluring and ominous. Tirade could hardly be more different – its setting of Peter Porter’s impassioned poem on the increasing commercialization of Australian culture notable for a virtuoso vocal part and its imaginative writing for a sizable array of percussion.
Does it all work?
Almost always. Banks took a compositional path that assuredly takes no prisoners, yet which is rarely less than engrossing and, on occasion, affecting. Almost all these pieces would stand up well in recital today, not least for the opportunities they provide to enterprising performers. Other than the concertos for horn and violin (Lyrita), few of his major works are available in modern accounts, and if Toccata could undertake or even licence recordings of his orchestral Divisions or such cross-genre conceptions as Nexus and Meeting Place, so much the better.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. These performances, rarely less than authoritative, are heard to advantage in a spacious but never diffuse ambience. Daniel Herscovitch contributes detailed and informative annotations, and this release hopefully marks a first stage in the rediscovery of a major figure.
Listen & Buy
For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the Toccata Classics website. For more information on Don Banks, click here
All of this was book-ended by two concerts of sacred music broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for Holy Week, both demonstrating what a unique and valuable choir they are.
On 17th March they gave their first concert following the BBC’s shameful axing announcement at St Giles’ Cripplegate in London. It was inevitably a special and emotional occasion. The programme of choral and cello music went under the bitterly ironic title of All Will Be Well (after Roxanna Panufnik’s piece of the same name which concluded the programme). “I’m still the producer of the BBC Singers” said Jonathan Manners in his introduction to much applause.
The concert was a fitting example of the range and depth of the choir’s repertoire in terms of time (it opened with Hildegard von Bingen’s O cruor sanguinis from the 12th Century) and style. It displayed impressively their ability to convey a sense of comfort and balm such as in Lesia Dychko’s short piece Blessed be the name (Emma Tring a beautiful solo soprano) as well something more unsettling like Fac me tecum pie flere by Sven-David Sandström.
But this was a programme of choral and cello music and cellist Benjamin Hughes was individually expressive as well as combining powerfully with the choir, both in evidence in Knut Nystedt’s Stabat Mater.
A magnificent encore of Maurice Duruflé’s motet Ubi Caritas was followed by a rapturous and moving ovation (below)
Today, we were joined by cellist @benhughescello and Chief Conductor @sjeannin in a programme for choir and solo cello 🎶
Thank you to all who joined us at a packed out @stgilesc 👏
The concert was recorded for future broadcast, stay tuned for more information 📻 pic.twitter.com/JJcJDh2dX6
Less than three weeks later, and following the BBC statement announcing a suspension of the closure, the group performed a Music for Maundy Thursday concert of sacred pieces on the theme of ‘contemplation, sorrow and reflection’ for live broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London (above).
Yet again the programme highlighted the sweep of their repertoire opening with a meditative motet from the 1590s, Vittoria Aleotti’s Miserere mei, Deus (from the first published book of sacred music by a woman) and also featuring sacred pieces from the 21st Century (Karin Rehnqvist’s I raise my hands and Judith Bingham’s Watch with Me), as well as William Byrd’s 14th Century The Lamentations of Jeremiah.
But there were two pieces where the group really shone to spectacular effect. Domenico Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater à 10, with Richard Pearce on chamber organ, was stunning and utterly compelling in its detailed delivery. Francis Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence made a glorious finale.
One must also acknowledge the key role of Chief Conductor, Sofi Jeannin, always assured yet empathetic. To watch her conduct is a mesmerising experience in itself.
The extent to which the BBC Singers and Jeannin develop and promote a diverse repertoire (they have a 50:50 gender policy for composers whose music they perform), engage in learning and community work, regularly perform commissions and broadcast on Radio 3 (making their phenomenal output available to such a wide audience) is all part of what makes them so unique.
I have seen them many times over many years and they never fail to move me. These two concerts only served to prove just why they are irreplaceable.
John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union and tweets at @john_earls
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