Tag Archives: Doreen Carwithen

In concert – Michael Collins, BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates – The 17th English Music Festival @ Dorchester Abbey

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Michael Collins (clarinet), BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates

Carwithen Suffolk Suite (1964)
Delius Idyll de Printemps, RTVI/5 (1889)
Stanford Clarinet Concerto in A minor Op.80 (1902)
Vaughan Williams Richard II: A Concert Fantasy (1944) [World Premiere Performance]
Holst Symphony in F major H47 ‘The Cotswolds’ (1899-1900)

The Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames
Friday 25 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This latest edition of the English Music Festival, also the first to take place entirely within the spacious ambience of the Abbey at Dorchester-on-Thames, began with the customary concert from the BBC Concert Orchestra and Martin Yates. As conceived for amateur players, Suffolk Suite by Doreen Carwithen feels nothing if not resourceful – whether in the regal opulence of Prelude, evocative poise of Orford Ness then the alternately rumbustious or genial humour of Suffolk Morris; the martial tread of Framlingham Castle bringing about a resolute close.

Recent years have seen renewed interest in Delius’ early orchestral work, Idylle de Primtemps an appealing instance of the composer harnessing Nordic influences to the impressionist style then emerging in his adopted home of Paris – resulting in this short yet atmospheric tone poem.

It was enticingly given by the BBCCO, which then partnered Michael Collins (above) for a revival of the Clarinet Concerto by Stanford. As with numerous concertante works from the period, this is a three-movements-in-one design. The preludial Allegro introduces two main themes, their development continued (albeit understatedly) in a central Andante that unfolds with mounting eloquence, before the final Allegro brings a transformed reprise of the initial themes on route to its decisive ending. As with the First Cello Concerto of Saint-Saëns or the Violin Concerto of Glazunov, this is a piece the accessibility of whose idiom belies the ingenuity of its formal thinking or appeal of its ideas, and Collins (who evidently last played the piece four decades ago) brought subtlety and insight to music which ultimately delivers more than it promises.

These EMF opening concerts regularly feature first performances, and this evening brought that of the ‘Concert Fantasy’ as adapted by Yates (above) from Vaughan Williams’ incidental music to a production of Richard II for a BBC radio production and subsequently shelved. As might be expected, this abounds in allusions to earlier VW works from the period (notably Job and the Fifth Symphony), but the skill by which the composer reflects salient events in Shakespeare’s play and ease with which these fuse into a relatively continuous whole is its own justification.

It made sense to feature a major work by Holst in this, the 150th anniversary-year of his birth as well as the 90th of his death, with his Cotswolds Symphony certainly a welcome inclusion. If the weight and intensity of its second movement, Elegy (In Memoriam William Morris), rather dwarfs those other three, this is less an issue when the overall sequence was as astutely balanced as here. Yates secured a keen response in the opening Allegro, the personality of its ideas here outweighing any short-windedness, while there was no lack of verve and grace in the Scherzo or of animation in the Finale. That Elegy, though, is the real highpoint and the BBCCO did not disappoint with the sustained plangency of its playing. Numerous of Holst’s early pieces qualify as his primary achievement pre-Planets and this is arguably the greatest.

It duly rounded-off a fine opening to this year’s EMF. Maybe a future such occasion could see the revival of Stanford’s once popular Third ‘Irish’ Symphony or, even more pressingly, the first hearing for over a century of Holst’s doubtless unfairly derided suite Phantastes?

Click to read more about the English Music Festival 2024 – and on the names for more on the artists Michael Collins, Martin Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra. For more detail on the composers, click on the names to read more about Carwithen, Delius, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Holst

Published post no.2,186 – Wednesday 22 May 2024

In concert – Alexander Sitkovetsky, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Beethoven in Hereford

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alexander-sitkovetsky

Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin, above), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Mendelssohn Symphony no.4 in A major Op.90 ‘Italian’ (1833 rev.1834)
Carwithen arr. Woods: Lento for Strings (1945 arr. 2020)
Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major Op.61 (1806)

St. Peter’s Church, Hereford
Sunday 26 July 2021 (3.30pm) (Concert reviewed online via ESO Digital)

Written by Richard Whitehouse

For this first concert in its 2021/22 season, the English Symphony Orchestra was heard at St. Peter’s Church, Hereford in a concert combining familiar classics with an arrangement of the kind that has been a hallmark of its programming under principal conductor Kenneth Woods.

The piece in question was a Lento for Strings that began as the slow movement of the First Quartet by Doreen Carwithen. Although she left a notable output of concert and film music, Carwithen (1922-2003) is remembered mainly through her association with William Alwyn – being his amanuensis from 1961 and second wife from 1975 for the final decade of his life. At the time of this quartet, she was a promising composer in her own right, as confirmed by Woods’s adaptation of the slow movement so that its prevailing intimacy and introspection lose none of their acuity. The ESO played it with requisite poise and finesse, not least those plangent solos for viola and violin that were eloquently rendered here by Matt Maguire and Kate Suthers, thereby resulting in an atmospheric miniature which warrants frequent revival.

Mendelssohn was just a year older when he completed his Italian symphony, long among his most popular works even if heard a mere handful of times then withheld from publication in his lifetime. Maybe the touristic nature of its conception or its unlikely tonal trajectory (A to A minor) created issues he was unable to resolve, but in creating this symphonic suite he had unconsciously set a precedent. Woods undoubtedly had its measure – whether in an Allegro (exposition repeat included) whose joyousness did not exclude more combative energy from its development and coda, an Andante whose journeying pilgrims were evoked with no little pathos, an intermezzo deftly revisiting the wide-eyed enchantment of the composer’s youth, or a finale whose interplay of saltarello and tarantella rhythms surged on to a decisive close.

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is one of a select few in its genre whose weight and substance justifies its occupying the whole second half. Alexander Sitkovetsky responded accordingly – the opening movement long-breathed but sustaining itself at least until the latter stages of the development, when a sense of expectancy rather failed to materialize. Momentum picked up thereafter, not least during a finely projected account of the (Kreisler) cadenza whose tensile rhetoric subsequently made the orchestra’s heartfelt re-entry in the coda seem more telling.

The highlight of this performance came with the Larghetto, slower than is often now the case but its sequence of variations melding into each other with seamless elegance, with a rapport between soloist and conductor at its most tangible in the theme’s hushed reiteration prior to a spirited transition into the Rondo. This did not lack for impetus, and if Sitkovetsky was most perceptive in the intervening episodes, the anticipation generated as the main theme steals in on the approach to the final tutti carried through to the nonchalant pay-off of the closing bars. An appealing and enjoyable concert in which, moreover, the ESO sounded not at all fazed by the vagaries of the acoustic. It continues its current schedule on October 10th with music by Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schubert – plus a mystery piece ‘‘to be announced on the night’’!

Further information on the ESO’s next concert can be found at their website. For more on Doreen Carwithen, visit the MusicWeb International page here