On Record – Shirley Collins: Archangel Hill (Domino)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

At the age of 87, one of Britain’s national musical treasures continues her 21st century renaissance. Folk music queen Shirley Collins lost the use of her voice to the condition of dysphonia for 37 years, haunted by the end of her marriage to Ashley Hutchings.

In the last eight years her recovery has been crowned by the release of two fine albums for the Domino label – Lodestar and Heart’s Ease – and renewed interest in her writing. She has literally rediscovered her voice – and Archangel Hill continues that convalescence as a love letter to her home county of Sussex.

What’s the music like?

This is folk music as it is meant to function – simple yet deeply moving, music that tells the story of a deep-rooted tradition. Collins is a reverent custodian of the music she has chosen here, and even the new compositions sound as if they have been around for a long time.

As a vocalist, she is in her best shape ever. Collins’ voice is like a beautifully aged tree, proud to show its age and revealing all the different layers of a life which, while difficult, can still be said to have been well-lived.

Along the way she pays tribute to her late sister Dolly, with a profound rendition of Fare Thee Well My Dearest Dear and Lost In A Wood. Her storytelling is peerless, able to shade the pictures exquisitely as she moves from the outward looking The Captain With The Whiskers to the relative darkness of Oakham Poachers.

Along the way she has sterling support from her regular troupe of musical collaborators, who have the chance to come into their own for the sparky instrumentals June Apple and Swaggering Boney. Offering a contrast to these are some moments of deeply strange and enchanting music, such as those found in High And Away, a new song telling the story of Collins’ meeting with Arkansas singer Almeda Riddle.

Does it all work?

It does. Collins sings with great instinct and subtle power, bringing her message across with great clarity. The cover picture, a painting of the local landmark Archangel Hill – otherwise known as Caburn – is the icing on the cake.

Is it recommended?

Yes, wholeheartedly. Shirley Collins is an artist we should treasure, one who holds the key to some incredibly important British musical traditions. The glint she still has in her eye would suggest that even now she has more to give.

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Buy

You can listen to clips from Archangel Hill and explore purchase options on the Domino website

In appreciation: Kaija Saariaho

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Yesterday we learned the very sad news of the death of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at the age of 70. Saariaho blossomed as a unique voice in 20th and 21st-century classical music, her music notable for its picturesque qualities and colourful, often exotic instrumentation.

Thankfully a good deal of her work has been recorded by the ever-enterprising Ondine Records, who put this playlist together in celebration of her 70th birthday earlier in the year:

Meanwhile you can watch Vista, one of Saariaho’s most striking recent orchestral works, in the performance below with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Susanna Mälkki

In concert – Benjamin Grosvenor, CBSO / Riccardo Minasi: Schubert, Chopin & Mozart

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Benjamin Grosvenor (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Riccardo Minasi

Schubert Overture in C major ‘In the Italian style’ D591 (1817)
Chopin Piano Concerto no.2 in F minor Op.21 (1830)
Mozart Symphony no.41 in C major K551 ‘Jupiter’ (1788)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 1 June 2023 (2.15pm)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

It is not often these days to have a whole concert of music from the late Classical and early Romantic eras, but that was just what the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra provided this afternoon under the disciplined as well as immensely assured direction of Riccardo Minasi.

There was no mistaking the inherent classicism of Chopin’s Second (sic) Piano Concerto – not least the simmering impetus in its opening Maestoso where, after a forthright tutti, Benjamin Grosvenor rendered those main melodies with requisite poise, and the emotional eddying of its development in direct contrast to the terseness of its coda. Most memorable was a Larghetto of melting eloquence but also, in its central episode, a volatility only gradually dispelled. Here, and in the final Allegro, the almost concertante role allotted to bassoon was characterfully taken by Nikolaj Henriques – as were those brass fanfares and col legno writing for strings (was this really Chopin’s idea?) which see the latter movement on its way to a spirited close. A limpid take on Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor from the same year made for an appropriate encore.

Mozart symphonies rarely conclude a programme nowadays, yet the last four are ideal for this purpose and none more than the Forty-First – by some distance the weightiest and the most physical such work prior to Beethoven’s Eroica. This was the highlight of Minasi’s recording of the final triptych (Harmonia Mundi), with the opening Allegro likewise a statement of intent in its rhythmic tensility and general bravura, though its more ambivalent asides were never downplayed. Less distinctive melodically than its two predecessors, the Andante is memorable for its expressive understatement and a subtlety – with wind and strings enfolded into a textural continuity – that accentuates its pathos. Nor was there any lack of suavity in the Menuetto, its outer sections finding ideal contrast with a trio whose pert expectancy was delectably pointed.

The final Allegro crowns this work in every respect and, here again, Minasi did not disappoint. Not that there any sense of merely ‘going through the motions’ with his inclusion of first- and second-half repeats, each of which brought added intensity to what had gone before as well as enabling the wealth of contrapuntal detail to come through as it too rarely does. For its part the CBSO more than rose to the challenge, not least in a coda whose methodical combining of this movement’s themes makes possible an apotheosis such as felt truly visceral in its affirmation.

Schubert evidently had other preoccupations when essaying his two overtures ‘in the Italian style’, both of which have fallen out of the repertoire this past half-century but which make for attractive and appealing curtain-raisers. Especially that in C major with its teasingly portentous introduction, jocular and lilting main themes, then coda which sees it through to an effervescent close. The CBSO players (woodwind in particular) audibly enjoyed making its acquaintance, and it would be a real pity were such pieces relegated to the lower reaches of today’s playlists.

Hopefully a performance such as that by Minasi will make this just a little less likely. One looks forward to his future collaboration with this orchestra, which returns next Wednesday with its chief conductor Kazuki Yamada in a programme featuring Holst, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. Click on the artist names for more information on Riccardo Minasi and Benjamin Grosvenor

Listening to Beethoven #221 – An die Hoffnung Op.32

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Peanuts comic strip, drawn by Charles M. Schulz (c)PNTS

An die Hoffnung Op.32 for voice and piano (1805, Beethoven aged 34)

Dedication Countess Josephine von Brunsvik
Text Christoph August Tiedge

Duration 4’00”

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by Ben Hogwood

Background and Critical Reception

Christoph August Tiedge’s lied An die Hoffnung had a profound effect on Beethoven, who set the text on two separate occasions – once published as Op.94 in 1816, but firstly published as Op.32 eleven years prior. Its dedication to Countess Josephine von Brunsvik is significant, for she was an unrequited love interest for the composer early in 1805. In March she wrote to her mother, “The good Beethoven has composed a lovely song for me on a text from Urania ‘An die Hoffnung’ as a gift for me”

By the summer feelings on both sides had cooled somewhat, with Beethoven removing Josephine as its dedicatee. Susan Youens, in booklet notes written for a collection of Beethoven lieder on Signum Classics, describes how the song’s ‘major mode optimism is rendered profound by darker touches of minor. The singer’s eloquent leap upward and the quiet blaze of a new (major) key for the acclamation to Hope – “O Hoffnung” – are unforgettable’.

Thoughts

This does indeed appear to be one of Beethoven’s most heartfelt utterances in the medium of singer and piano. It helps that the range of the song falls neatly within the grasp of either a baritone or tenor range, making it available for almost all male voice types.

Yet it is the elegance of the piano with which Beethoven begins, an unspoken melody spinning out with heartfelt ease. When the singer enters the mood is solemn yet rays of light are frequently shed by the piano harmonies as the music turns back to the major key.

The song makes a profound impact, both singer and pianist under the spell of Tiedge’s poetry, right up to the final line – and a final serene thought from the piano. We are in the calm of E flat major, same key as the Eroica symphony, but what a different mood we have here – vulnerability instead of heroism.

Recordings used

Werner Güra (tenor), Christoph Berner (fortepiano) (Harmonia Mundi)
Matthias Goerne (baritone), Jan Lisiecki (piano) (Deutsche Grammophon)
Ian Partridge (tenor), Richard Burnett (fortepiano) (Amon Ra)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Jörg Demus (piano) (Deutsche Grammophon)
John Mark Ainsley (tenor), Iain Burnside (piano) (Signum Classics)
Hermann Prey (baritone), Leonard Hokanson (piano) (Capriccio)

Fischer-Dieskau benefits from a heavenly introduction from pianist Jörg Demus, who sets the tone for an intense and often visionary account. The two recordings with fortepiano are quite different – Werner Güra and Christoph Berner pressing on a quite a rate when compared with Ian Partidge and Richard Burnett.

Also written in 1805 Spohr String Quartet no.2 in G minor Op.4/2

Next up Leonore

In concert – Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates: English Music Festival opening concert

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Raphael Wallfisch (cello, below), BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates

Lewis A Celebratory Overture (2023) [EMF commission: World premiere]
Lloyd Webber (orch. Yates) Scenes from Childhood (c1950) [World premiere]
Moeran Cello Concerto in B minor (1945)
Alwyn Serenade for Orchestra (1932) [World premiere]
Delius Two Pieces for Small Orchestra (1911-12)
Vaughan Williams (arr. Adrian Williams) A Road All Paved with Stars (1929/2016) [Public premiere]

Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames
Friday 26 May 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The breezy ebullience of Paul Lewis’s A Celebratory Overture (redolent of Malcolm Arnold without any risk of expressive ambiguity) launched this latest English Music Festival in fine style, with its crisp and precise playing from the BBC Concert Orchestra under Martin Yates.

As so often in these concerts, world premieres were not lacking and the first brought hitherto unknown partsongs by William Lloyd Webber arranged into suite-form then orchestrated by the conductor. If the resultant Scenes from Childhood adds but little to the reputation of this not inconsiderable figure, the Prelude yields appealing poise while Serenade is a waltz of no mean suavity, then the Finale nimbly combines elements of fugue and waltz on its way to a rousing close. Worth hearing, and not least when rendered with such obvious enjoyment.

The emotional weight of this first half inevitably fell upon the Cello Concerto by E.J. Moeran. Completed in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was the composer’s first large-scale piece for his wife Peers Coetmore; her belated and often approximate recording likely having deterred others from taking it up. Not so Raphael Wallfisch (above), his belief evident from the outset of a Moderato whose confiding eloquence is not without undercurrents of unease. These latter are made explicit at the start of the Adagio, otherwise centred on one of the composer’s most affecting melodies and building with due inevitability to a cadenza whose growing animation carries over to the final Allegretto. Here a jig-like main theme denotes an Irish influence that offsets any tendency to introspection as it guides this engaging movement to a decisive close.

Quite a performance, then, which was complemented after the interval by a first hearing for the early(ish) Serenade by William Alwyn. Written while on examination duties in Australia, this undemanding piece moves from a (mostly!) tranquil Prelude, through a stealthy and by no means uninhibited Bacchanale then a serene Air which could yet find favour as a radio staple, to a Finale that, as Andrew Knowles rightly indicated in his programme note, betrays more than a hint of Czech folk-music across its insouciant and ultimately boisterous course.

Hardly an interlude, the brace of pieces by Delius fairly encapsulate the inward rapture of his maturity. Yates (above) brought just the right lilt to the dancing gait of On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, while the subtle eddying of Summer Night on the River was effortlessly conveyed.

The final premiere tonight came in the guise of A Road All Paved with Stars – the ‘symphonic fantasy’ as arranged by Adrian Williams (a notable composer in his own right) from Vaughan Williams’ comic opera The Poisoned Kiss. Occasionally revived, its dramatic prolixity rather obscures its musical highpoints – emphasized here in what is both a chronological overview and cumulative paraphrase that also adds a non-symphonic orchestral work to its composer’s output. The surging emotion of those final stages could hardly leave an audience unmoved. This vivid reading concluded a memorable concert in which the Moeran was dedicated to the memory of Michal Kaznowski – who, as cellist of the Maggini Quartet and formerly section-leader at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, has left a legacy worth remembering.

To read more about the festival, visit the English Music Festival website. For information on the performers, click on the links to read more about cellist Raphael Wallfisch, conductor Martin Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and for more information on composer and arranger Adrian Williams and composer Paul Lewis