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On Record – Em Marshall-Luck, Paulina Voices, BBC Concert Orchestra / Leigh O’Hara: Fide et Literis – Gustav Holst

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Holst
St Paul’s Suite H118 (1912-13)
Brook Green Suite H190 (1933)
Gavotte H190a (1933)
Seven Choruses from the Alcestis of Euripides, H146 (1920)
Playground Song H118a (1911)
The Vision of Dame Christian, H101 (1909)

Em Marshall-Luck (reciter), Paulina Voices / Heidi Pegler, BBC Concert Orchestra / Leigh O’Hara

EM Records EMRCD090 [69’48”]
Producer Neil Varley Engineer Christopher Rouse

Recorded 4-5 November 2023 in the Great Hall, St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Brook Green, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records further extends the Holst discography in the 150th anniversary year of his birth (and 90th anniversary year of his death) with this collection of works written at and intended for pupils of St Paul’s Girls’ School, where the composer taught for 29 years until his death.

What’s the music like?

For all his interest in matters spiritual and arcane, Gustav Holst was an eminently practical musician whose educational pieces were tailored to the situation at hand. Not least his Seven Choruses from the Alcestis of Euripides, written for a production of this drama at St Paul’s. Its scoring for unison female voices, three flutes and harp recalls those diaphanous settings in the Third Group of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda – not least its sixth chorus ‘I have sojourned in the Muse’s Land’ that, in its fusion of yearning with sensuousness, is ideal for such a text as this.

Most substantial here is The Vision of Dame Christian – aka The Masque – written for the play by Frances Gray, who was the first headmistress (then High Mistress) at St Paul’s. The ‘Dame Christian’ in question is Christian Colet, mother of John Colet who had founded the original St Paul’s School 400 years before. Set in 1523, the sequence comprises three choruses with a prelude, interlude and finale – the scoring, for female voices with small orchestra, conveying a pathos devoid of sentimentality which is typical of Holst’s music for this school. Revived at decade-long intervals until 1958, it was heard again in 1973 (and issued privately on LP) then given a full production in 2013, but this first professional recording captures its deftness and eloquence in ample measure. Perhaps future performances would be feasible in other venues?

The two suites for strings long ago took their place within a lineage of compositions for this medium to which British artists have contributed so extensively throughout some 150 years. Certainly, the St Paul’s Suite is a classic of its genre – what with its rumbustious initial Jig, its animated Ostinato, its alternately soulful then playful Intermezzo, or a Finale which revisits Holst’s Second Suite for Military Band by combining traditional tunes The Dargason and Greensleeves in a fantasia ingenious and affecting. The Brook Green Suite is simpler in design – which is not to deny the appeal of its homely Prelude, its wistful Air or its lively Dance. Recorded for the first time is the Gavotte which Holst omitted at the premiere, its brusque charm enhancing the whole when heard in its original context as second movement.

Does it all work?

It does. This project was evidently a labour of love for St Paul’s Girls’ School, whose Paulina Voices duly rise to the challenge of continuing their venerable tradition under the admirable direction of Heidi Pegler, not least in the Playground Song with its ‘Henry Newbolt meets St Trinian’s’ text. The passages of recitation are rendered with clarity and elegance by Em Marshall-Luck (herself a Paulinian), while Leigh O’Hara secures a spirited response from the BBC Concert Orchestra in music whose sheer directness and accessibility are never for a moment naïve or simplistic.

Is it recommended?

It is. The presentation is well up to EMR’s customary standards, with detailed annotations by Em Marshall-Luck and school archivist Howard Bailes. Clearly the Great Hall of St Pauls’ Girls’ School is as ideal for recording as ‘Mr Holst’s Room’ in the Music Wing proved to be for his composing.

Listen & Buy

For further information visit the EM Records website, and for purchase information visit the Presto website. Click on the names for more on conductor Leigh O’Hara, Paulina Voices, the BBC Concert Orchestra and for more on The Holst Society

Published post no.2,382 – Wednesday 4 December 2024

On Record – Roderick Williams, Rupert Marshall-Luck, BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews – La Belle Dame (EM Records)

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Roderick Williams (baritone) (Holst, O’Neil, Quilter & Scott), Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin, Brian), BBC Concert Orchestra / John Andrews

Brian orch. Marshall-Luck Legend B144 (c1919)
Delius Petite Suite d’Orchestre no.1 RTVI/6 (1889-90)
Holst Ornulf’s Drapa H34 (1898, rev. 1900)
Mackenzie Colomba Op.28 – Prelude (1883)
O’Neill La Belle Dame sans Merci Op.31 (1908)
Quilter orch. anonymous The Faithless Shepherdess Op.12/4 (1908)
Scott The Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Op.8 (1900)

EM Records EMRCD085 [61’21’’] English texts included
Producer Neil Varley Engineers Andrew Rushton, Robbie Hayward
Recorded 5-7 January 2023 at Battersea Arts Centre, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its enterprising schedule with this collection of mainly vocal settings from the early twentieth century – heard alongside early orchestral pieces by Mackenzie and Delius, plus a recent orchestration of what is Havergal Brian’s only surviving chamber work.

What’s the music like?

This album’s title is also that of the 1819 poem by John Keats, its tale of ecstasy recollected in despair tangibly conveyed by Norman O’Neill in a setting which surely ranks among his finest concert works before music for theatre productions became his focus. Only marginally less compelling, Cyril Scott’s take on a typically over-elaborate ballad by Walter Scott has a keen sense of atmosphere – not least as rendered by Roderick Williams with an appropriate Lowland burr. Less involving emotionally, Holst’s setting of verse from an early Ibsen play is rather forced in its rhetoric – though the passages of emotional impulsiveness, allied to an acute feeling for orchestral textures, does presage those masterpieces of his maturity. Roger Quilter’s setting of a favourite Elizabethan lyric launches the collection with brusque charm.

Of the orchestral pieces, Delius’s early Première Petite Suite is here heard in full for the first time. Influences are easy to discern – Bizet in its whimsical Marche, Grieg in its winsome Berceuse, Massenet in its vivacious Scherzo then Fauré in its plaintive Duo – but never to the detriment of this music’s appeal, while the final variations on a sternly unison theme with ecclesiastical overtones will keep even seasoned Delians guessing as to its provenance. The likelihood of Alexander Mackenzie’s lyrical drama Colomba being revived is slim, but the Prelude to its first act has an evocative ardency which concludes this album in fine style.

John Andrews has the measure of these contrasting idioms and gets committed playing from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Roderick Williams is on fine form, as is Rupert Marshall-Luck in the Legend by Havergal Brian he himself has orchestrated. Ranging widely in expressive profile, while building considerable fervour during its relatively brief span prior to a calmly eloquent close, it is a stylish adaptation of the violin-and-piano original which has enjoyed increasing exposure this past decade. Marshall-Luck speculates whether Brian intended his own orchestral realization yet, given the composer had evidently written an orchestral piece with this title around 1915, it seems not impossible that the duo version is itself a reduction.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that the whole proves greater than the sum of its parts. Certainly, the works by Scott and O’Neill find these contemporaneous while otherwise very different figures at something near their best, while the Delius makes for an attractive sequence which deserves more than occasional revival. As, too, does the Brian given that comparable shorter concertante pieces by figures such as Saint-Saëns are being taken up by a younger generation of violinists. The spacious sound and extensive annotations are both up to EMR’s customary high standards.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Hearing the Holst prompts the thought that, with the 150th and 90th anniversaries of his respective birth and death falling this year, now would be the ideal time for revival of his orchestral suite Phantastes – which has seemingly remained unheard since its 1912 premiere.

Listen & Buy

La Belle Dame is due for release on 19 April, but you can hear excerpts and look at purchase options on the EM Records website. For more information on the artists click on the names of conductor John Andrews, baritone Roderick Williams, violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck and the BBC Concert Orchestra

Published post no.2,126 – Saturday 23 March 2024

On Record – Enchanted Places: The Complete Fraser-Simson Settings of A. A. Milne (EM Records)

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Grant Doyle (baritone) and John Kember (piano) with Brian Sibley (narrator)

EM Records EMRCD082 [two discs, 2h29m17s]
Producers Grant Doyle, John Kember Engineer Nick Taylor
Recorded 2019 and 2020 at Porcupine Studios, Mottingham, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its coverage of lesser-known and neglected English music with this complete traversal of A. A. Milne settings by Harold Fraser-Simson, more than appropriate when this year coincides with the centenary of Milne’s first collection of poems for children.

What’s the music like?

One among a notable generation of ‘light music’ composers, Fraser-Simson (1872-1944) had a brief if successful career with his songs and musicals; his musical comedy The Maid of the Mountains enjoyed one of the biggest West End successes during the latter years of the First World War and is still occasionally revived (the complete score was recorded by Hyperion in 2006). Although Simson’s star waned after the mid-1920s, his settings of Milne’s poems from the collections When Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) have kept his name alive. Along with Milne’s books of short stories, these centre upon his son Christopher Robin and the latter’s nursery toys – above all, his bear Winnie-the-Pooh. They have held their own, moreover, throughout an era when the Disney franchise has continued to grow exponentially.

The songs themselves were published in six books between 1924 and 1929, alongside Milne’s poems with illustrations by Ernest Shepard which had graced the original collections. Private recordings were made at this time by Cicely Fraser-Simson with her husband as pianist, while Christopher Robin recorded several for HMV in 1927, and they have continued to attract the attention of singers both amateur and professional. Nor have the poems lost their appeal for subsequent generations of composers (Oliver Knussen drawing on a selection of them in his 1970 opus Hums and Songs of Winnie-the-Pooh), but Fraser-Simson’s settings have retained their charm along with a pathos accrued over the intervening decades. The present recording features 10 songs recorded for the first time to make this collection complete in all respects.

Does it all work?

Yes, not least given the quality of these performances. A seasoned exponent of opera, Grant Doyle gets to the heart of these settings – his singing of a warmth and precision that offsets any risk of sentimentality. Nor can his diction be faulted – no potential purchaser is likely to be without Milne’s original books but having them to hand is hardly necessary – while John Kember accompanies with subtlety and discretion. Devotee of all things Pooh, Brian Sibley narrates his handful of texts with due feeling for their unforced and often ingenious scansion.

This might not be the only way to realize these settings (a comparably extensive collection by Volante Opera Productions (Prima Facie) features seven singers), but the consistent and characterful nature of Doyle’s approach is its own justification. Those wishing to sample this release should go to The King’s Breakfast (CD2, tracks 26-29), essentially a cantata in which singer, narrator and pianist are joined by four other musicians to deftly imaginative effect, or evergreens Vespers (1, 39) and Buckingham Palace (2, 3) which emerge newly minted here.

Is it recommended?

Yes. The sound has an ideal combination of clarity and definition, while Sibley’s booklet notes on composer, author and project could hardly be bettered as an informed introduction. Put the Disney treatment aside and enjoy these settings for the winsome humour as initially intended.

Listen

Buy

You can explore purchase options for this album at the EM Records website. For more information on the artists click on the names of Grant Doyle, John Kember and Brian Sibley

Published post no.2,091 – Sunday 18 February 2024

On Record: Rupert Marshall-Luck & Duncan Honeybourne – Elgar & Gurney: A New Light (EM Records)

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Elgar
Violin Sonata in E minor Op.82 (1918)
Salut d’Amour Op.12 (1888)
Chanson de Nuit Op.15/1 (c1889)
Chanson de Matin Op.15/2 (c1890)
Gurney ed. Marshall Luck
Violin Sonata in D major (c1918-19)

Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin), Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

EM Records EMRCD075 [73’39″]

Producer Rupert Marshall-Luck Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 29-30 March 2021, Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Rupert Marshall-Luck here continues his exploration of British music for violin and piano with this coupling of sonatas by Elgar and Gurney, the former performed in a new critical edition as prepared by the violinist and the latter receiving its first commercial recording.

What’s the music like?

The Violin Sonata was the first of a series of ‘chamber’ pieces Elgar wrote near the close and in the aftermath of the First World War, distilling his musical language while accentuating a pathos seldom far beneath the surface during his maturity. Outwardly traditional in overall design, none of its three movements is yet beholden to formal precedent. Thus, the opening Allegro alternates its subtly differentiated themes to halting and even uncertain effect; the Romance contrasts the flowing eloquence of its middle section with the restrained poignancy of those either side, while the final Allegro centres on an ardently expressive melody as this unfolds with increasing purposefulness toward a tersely decisive close. Marshall-Luck’s edition was published by the Munich firm of Henle in 1919, a century after the work’s first performance.

His Violin Sonata in D marks another stage in the reclamation of Ivor Gurney’s voluminous output. Composed near the start of that period between his discharge from the army and his admittance to a psychiatric hospital, it is less overt in its emotional intensity than the later E flat Sonata but more cohesive formally – due, in part, to Gurney’s advocate Marion Scott in having preserved a near-complete score as has subsequently been realized by Ian Venables. Despite its Allegro marking, the first movement is often understated in its expressive range and motivated more by tonal fluidity than by its rhythmic animation. The Scherzo exudes a capering humour complemented by the winsome poise of its trio, then the largely literal ‘da capo’ ends in teasing ambivalence. The Lento builds from its initial reticence to a climax of acute plangency before subsiding into regretful calm; after which, the Finale sets out with a renewed determination, offset by its elegant second theme and energized by its development, on the way to a coda whose resolution is the greater for its almost offhand sense of closure.

Placed between these sonatas are several of Elgar’s duo miniatures – Salut d’Amour with its effortlessly ingratiating charm, then the Chansons which make for an ideal diptych in terms of their respective pathos and ardency. Marshall-Luck plays all three with unfailing artistry.

Does it all work?

Pretty much. Comparison with his earlier recording of the Elgar (EM Records EMRCD011) finds Marshall-Luck more expansive in each movement, notably a finale that now has greater depth and insight. Here and in the Gurney, Duncan Honeybourne (most recently heard in a deeply impressive account of Frank Bridge’s Sonata on EMRCD070-71) contributes pianism as sensitive yet impulsive as this music requires and which adds much to the persuasiveness of these accounts. Hopefully the Gurney will go on to receive the public hearings it deserves.

Is it recommended?

Yes. The sound has the focus and clarity needed for this difficult medium, while Marshall-Luck contributes detailed overviews on each piece within the extensive booklet notes. As a programme it adds considerably to one’s appreciation of the music – ‘A New Light’ indeed.

Listen & Buy

For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the EM Records website. For more information on the composers, click on the names Sir Edward Elgar and Ivor Gurney – and on the performers, Rupert Marshall-Luck and Duncan Honeybourne

On record – Jeremy Huw Williams & Paula Fan – From The Hills of Dream: The Forgotten Songs of Arnold Bax (EM Records)

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bax-songs

Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone), Paula Fan (piano)

Bax
The Grand Match (1903). To my Homeland (1904). Leaves, Shadows and Dreams. Viking-Battle-Song (1905). I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden. The Twa Corbies (both 1906). Longing. From the Hills of Dream (both 1907). Landskab (1908). Marguerite (1909). Das tote Kind (1911). Welcome, Somer. Of her Mercy (both 1914). A Leader (1916). The Splendour Falls (1917). Le Chant d’Isabeau. A Rabelaisian Catechism (both 1920). Carrey Clavel (1925) – all world premiere recordings

EM Records EMRCD073 [77’56”]

Producer Jeremy Huw Williams Engineer Wiley Ross

Recorded 13, 14, 16, 22 & 23 October 2020 at Jeff Haskell Recording Studio; 13 November 2020 at Jim Brady Recording Studios, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

EM Records continues its coverage of lesser-known (or the lesser-known music of) English composers in an extensive survey of ‘forgotten’ songs by Arnold Bax, of which only a few were publicly performed in his lifetime with several of them first heard as recently as 2018.

What’s the music like?

Although he is best known for his symphonies and tone poems, songs with piano occupy a not unimportant place in Bax’s output – particularly over his formative years. This selection unfolds chronologically – opening with a lively setting of Moira O’ Neil’s The Grand Match, then continuing pensively with Stephen Gwynn’s To My Homeland in which Bax’s love of Irish culture was first manifest. Two settings of ‘Fiona Macleod’ (aka William Sharp) – the evocative Leaves, Shadows and Dreams, then the (would-be) heroics of Viking-Battle-Song – precede a ravishing take on Percy Shelley’s I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, before The Twa Corbies finds Bax experimenting (not always successfully) with recitation in this traditional text. Two further settings of Macleod – the poised elegance of Longing, then the searching inwardness of From the Hills of Dream – lead on to this composer’s only treatment of a text in Danish, that of Landskab (Landscape) by Jens Peter Jacobsen, whose three manuscripts imply syntactical problems never adequately resolved despite the music’s gentle eloquence.

Bax set four texts by William Morris, among which the warmly expressive Marguerite went (surprisingly) unheard until now. The sombre symbolism of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s Das tote Kind is underplayed despite being in the original German, and two rondels by Geoffrey Chaucer – the wistful charm of Welcome, Somer then deft humour of Of her Mercy – exude sentiments to which he is more attuned. This is even more evident in A Leader, a setting of George Russell’s poem that underlines Bax’s emotional involvement with those issues and persons of Ireland’s ill-fated Easter Uprising that ranks among the composer’s finest songs. Few are likely to prefer his dogged setting of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Splendour Falls to that by Britten (or the Delius part-song), whereas the traditional Le Chant d’Isabeau has appealing winsomeness. A Rabelaisian Catechism is a salacious take on another traditional text, with a little help from Vaughan Williams and Wagner, while Carrey Clavel matches Thomas Hardy’s wry observation of scorned love to a tee and makes for a delightful close.

Does it all work?

Most of the time. Almost from the outset, Bax was an inventive but also interventionist setter of texts, such that the poet’s sentiments are not necessarily those conveyed in his songs. This might explain why he increasingly eschewed the genre once he had found his true metier in orchestral and chamber media, so that there are very few songs from the mid-1920s onwards. That said, the literary range of what Bax did set as well as the expressive range of his settings ensures his contribution is a notable one and is enhanced by those songs featured on this disc.

Is it recommended?

Yes, not least through the advocacy of Jeremy Huw Williams whose unstinting advocacy is underpinned by Paula Fan’s perceptive accompaniment. The extensive booklet notes are by the Bax authority Graham Parlett, to whose memory this release is appropriately dedicated.

Listen and Buy

To listen to excerpts from this disc and view purchase options, visit the EM Records website. To read more about Arnold Bax, visit his dedicated composer website, and for more on the performers, click on the names of Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan. Finally for more information on the English Music Festival, click here