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Online concert – English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: The music of Saxton & Sawyers

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English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Sawyers Remembrance (2020); Octet (2007)
Saxton The Resurrection of the Soldiers (2016)

Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth
7-8 April 2021

Written by Ben Hogwood

For the latest in their online series, the English Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Kenneth Woods presented a trio of works written in the last 20 years. The music of Philip Sawyers, their Composer Laureate, featured in two contrasting pieces.

A recent work, Remembrance for Strings, made an instant impact. This deeply emotive, thought provoking piece has a hint of Elgar in its profoundly elegiac tone and scoring, but unmistakably bears Sawyers’ fingerprints as the theme evolves, gradually creeping upwards. The strings of the ESO were perfectly paced by Woods, giving the theme plenty of room and bringing the important viola and cello lines through the texture. Sawyers finds effective contrasts between notable pain points of discord and an almost complete stillness as the strings collect their thoughts, holding their collective breath in ideally weighted phrasing. This deeply affecting piece deserves to be heard much further afield, its impact comparable (if notably different) to that of Barber’s Adagio for Strings. A note for Emily Davis, the ESO guest leader, who gave a touching final solo.

Sawyers’ Octet was next, a single movement work from 2007 written for the youthful ensemble Liquid Architecture. With a scoring for clarinet, horn, bassoon, string quartet and double bass, its colours provided the ideal contrast to Remembrance, as did its series of compact melodies and increasingly busy exchanges, carefully interwoven throughout the ensemble. Written in a single movement, the Octet is an involving work, treating the eight players as soloists but exploring and enjoying their properties in smaller group discussions. Perhaps inevitably the mind is briefly cast back to Stravinsky’s work for the same number of players, but also the harmonic language of Berg and Hindemith. When all the instruments play together the dense contrapuntal writing is at its most effective, while Sawyers ensures the component melodies can be appreciated in a solo capacity too. Kenneth Woods conducted a fine account here, the ESO soloists playing with flair and sensitivity, all the while gathering momentum towards an emphatic arrival in C major. The instrumentalists’ placing, and some sensitive camera work under the direction of videographer Tim Burton, allowed heightened insight into the speed of Sawyers’ rapidly evolving ideas.

As he approaches his 70th birthday, Robert Saxton is a British composer arguably yet to receive the full recognition of which his music is surely due. The Resurrection of The Soldiers is an illustration of his ability to respond to art from another form with remarkable perception. A 12-minute tone poem for string orchestra, written in 2016 and dedicated to George Vass, The Resurrection of The Soldiers is a powerfully concentrated work, responding as it does to the final panel of Stanley Spencer’s commission for Sandham Memorial Chapel. The set of paintings result from the artist’s experiences in the British army in World War One, depicting soldiers emerging from their graves on the last day.

Clearly this depiction struck a lasting emotional chord with the composer, his response speaking initially of searing pain but progressing to a much more hopeful outcome. The upper strings of the ESO spoke powerfully here, maintaining their intensity in the long notes before digging in to an eventful exchange in the energetic central section. This culminated in a powerful chord, richly scored – and with a reverent pause from which the resurrection itself evolved with increasing surety, reaching an exultant if not un-scarred E major.

You may wish to complement the ESO’s performance with detail from the artwork itself, from the National Trust website, or you may wish to form your own images which the music powerfully imprints. Either way, do catch the whole of this compelling program, for these are three very meaningful pieces of music given in the best possible performances.

You can view this concert from 18-22 February at the ESO website, and thereafter for ESO digital supporters here

On record – Emily Davis, English String Orchestra, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Steven R. Gerber: Lyric Pieces, Sinfonietta Nos. 1 & 2, String Sinfonia Nos. 1 & 2 (Nimbus Alliance)

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Emily Davis (violin), English String Orchestra, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Steven R. Gerber
Sinfoniettas – No. 1 (1991, arr. Hagen); No. 2 (2000). String Sinfoniasa – No. 1 (1995); No. 2 (2011, all arr. Williams). Two Lyric Pieces (2005)ab

Nimbus Alliance NI6423 [73’07”]

Producer Phil Rowlands
Engineer Tim Burton

Recorded 7-8 October 2020, Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The English Symphony Orchestra returns with music by American composer Steven R. Gerber (1948-2015). Little known in the UK, it enjoyed wide exposure in the Russia of the immediate post-Soviet era and could well find a new audience through such pieces as those featured here.

What’s the music like?

In common with many composers of his generation, Gerber’s output charts a trajectory from serialism to a direct re-engagement with tonality, but his success in aligning these nominally opposing aesthetics confirms a creative insight matched by (surprisingly?) few of his peers. That four out of the five pieces are arrangements from chamber works should not imply any lack of versatility on the composer’s part; rather, these are all pieces more likely to reach a wider listenership through being reimagined for larger though still relatively modest forces.

This is evident not least in the case of the two Sinfoniettas. The First is an arrangement of the Piano Quintet by Daron Hagen (pupil of David Diamond and Ned Rorem, and a composer of numerous works for the stage) whose five movements evolve from the tensile incisiveness of its preludial first movement, via the capricious then scurrying manner of the Intermezzo and Scherzo that ensue, to a finale whose accrued emotional plangency finds its apogee in a coda whose headlong impetus renders what went before from an appreciably different perspective.

The other arrangements were all undertaken by Adrian Williams, himself a notable composer whose large-scale Symphony the ESO has recently recorded for future release. Derived from Gerber’s Fourth Quartet, the First String Sinfonia is most arresting for the consistent intensity of its central movements – a Lento then a Maestoso that might have functioned as finale had not the composer opted, rightly as it turns out, to let the emotion subside over the course of a brief yet affecting Postlude – one that balances the gentle opening Moderato to potent effect. As derived from Gerber’s Sixth Quartet, the Second String Sinfonia emerges as a much more equivocal work – the angular and ambivalent Allegro followed by the menacing Intermezzo, then a final Theme and Variations which ultimately winds down towards an uncertain repose.

A more elaborate, indeed methodical take on the Variations format is pursued by the second and final movement of Gerber’s Fifth Quartet, here arranged as the Second Sinfonietta which again makes use of fuller instrumentation and exudes more charged expression. Not least the opening Fantasy, whose determined contrasts of mood make for a disjunct overall trajectory such as is countered, though not wholly resolved, through the steady and always inevitable build-up of its finale towards a forceful while by no means decisive or clinching apotheosis.

Does it all work?

Yes. This is engaging music which, if it tends to an unrelieved earnestness, cannot be faulted for emotional sincerity. It was astute programming to include Two Lyric Pieces for violin and strings, the only item in its original guise, whose inward soulfulness finds Gerber at his most approachable – not least when Emily Davis renders the solo part with such fluency and poise.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, directed by Kenneth Woods with unfailing conviction in sound of real clarity. Those who are coming afresh to Gerber should certainly respond positively to what is heard here.

Listen and Buy

You can listen to clips and purchase this disc from the Nimbus website. For more information on Steven R. Gerber, click here. For more on Daron Hagen, click here – and click on the names for more on Adrian Williams, Emily Davis, Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra. –

In concert – English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods – Sibelius: Symphony no.7

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English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Sibelius Symphony no.7 in C major Op.105 (1924)

Recorded at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth on 2 May 2021

Written by Richard Whitehouse

It is good to see that, despite resuming its live schedule this autumn, the English Symphony Orchestra has continued the Music from Wyastone online series as was such a boon over 18 months of lockdown. Moreover, this latest instalment begins the ESO’s most ambitious such project – the seven symphonies (with Tapiola) by Sibelius to run across the 65th anniversary of his death next year. Starting with the Seventh Symphony is certainly a provocative gambit, and it remains to be seen whether this cycle unfolds in strictly backward chronological order.

A decisive (but not simple) test in a performance of this work is how the overall trajectory is perceived. In almost all the most successful readings, the music evolves as if intuitively – the end being implicit in the beginning more than with any symphony before or since. This was certainly true of the ESO’s account, in which the formal constituents were hardly tangible as such until after the event. Sibelius may have distilled the thematic aspect to its essentials, yet in so fusing form and content he endowed this piece with an inevitability always evident here.

Following an expectant if not unduly tense introduction, Kenneth Woods built the first main section with unforced eloquence to a first statement of the trombone chorale as provides the formal backbone. His transition into the ‘scherzo’ was less abrupt than many, while picking up energy such that the chorale’s reappearance generated the requisite momentum to sustain the relatively extended ‘intermezzo’ with its felicitous interplay of woodwind and strings. If his approach to the chorale’s last emergence seemed a fraction cautious, the latter’s intensity carried over into the searing string threnody (much emulated but not equalled by generations since) that subsided into pensive uncertainty – from where the music gathered itself one last time for a magisterial crescendo which, rightly, did not so much end as merely cease to be.

A deeply thoughtful and superbly realized performance which launches the ESO’s Sibelius cycle in impressive fashion. A pity, though, that the end-credits should be accompanied with a repeat of music heard earlier. At the close of such a piece, the rest really should be silence.

Further information on the ESO’s current season can be found at their website

In concert – ESO Digital Black History Concert – The Art of the Rag

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English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Joplin (arr. Schuller) Maple Leaf Rag (1899)
Europe (arr. Schuller) Castle House Rag (1914)
Blake (arr. Schuller) Charleston Rag (1917)
Morton Black Bottom Stomp (1925)
Joplin (arr. Schuller) The Entertainer (1902)

Recorded at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth on November 10th, 2020
First broadcast on October 28th, 2021

Written by Richard Whitehouse

Although recorded just over a year ago, the English Symphony Orchestra’s Art of the Rag made an ideal contribution to the most recent Black History Month – focussing on music by four of the most influential practitioners of the dance-form that became known as Ragtime.

He might not actually have attained his 100th birthday, but Eubie Blake remains among the most versatile of those composers who straddled the (apparent) divide between ragtime and jazz – Charleston Rag typical in its harmonic sideslips and rhythmic syncopation confidently rendered here. His contribution to the promoting of Black musicians, furthering the American war-effort, and creating specifically African-American music has overshadowed James Reese Europe’s compositions – Castle House Rag conveying an ambivalent jollity which was surely intended. Because he lived long enough to perform and record extensively, Jelly Roll Morton has no equals in evolving a jazz idiom – Black Bottom Stomp effectively codifying what was merely a dance craze into a musical template which was to have far-reaching consequences.

Framing these items were the two most popular rags by Scott Joplin. Among his earliest such pieces, Maple Leaf Rag was a success immediately on publication, while The Entertainer had chalked up a plethora of arrangements even before the ragtime revival of the early 1970s, but neither secured financial success for their hapless composer. They certainly responded well to dextrous and attentive playing from the ESO, ably directed by Kenneth Woods and given the benefit – as were most of these pieces – of stylish arrangements by the late Gunther Schuller.

An enterprising selection such as more than fulfilled its purpose in promoting music whose familiarity need not detract from its innovative qualities. Perhaps the ESO could yet mount    a concert or even a staged presentation of Joplin’s magnum opus – the opera Treemonisha?

Further information on the ESO’s current season can be found at their website

In concert – Sarah Beth Briggs, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Mozart in Cheltenham

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Sarah Beth Briggs (piano, above), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Sawyers The Valley of Vision (2017)
Mozart Piano Concerto no.22 in E flat major K482 (1785)
Beethoven Symphony no.6 in F major Op.68 ‘Pastoral’ (1808)

Town Hall, Cheltenham
Monday 25 October 2021

Written by Richard Whitehouse; picture of Sarah Beth Briggs by Carolyn Mendelsohn

Tonight’s concert found the English Symphony Orchestra at the Town Hall in Cheltenham, a building of Victorian opulence with an expansive while (surprisingly?) immediate acoustic to match, in a programme featuring classics of their respective media by Mozart and Beethoven.

First, though, a welcome revival for The Valley of Vision – the tone poem by Philip Sawyers that surveys the environs around Shoreham, Kent as were immortalized in the visionary early landscapes of Samuel Palmer. Although the composer had identified five continuous sections, the probing intensity of this music makes for a seamless unfolding which was to the fore in a superbly focussed account as directed by Kenneth Woods (who recently premiered Sawyers’ Fifth Symphony at the Colorado Mahler Festival). No less tangible was the control over this music’s momentum, extending through to a climactic faster section before soon regaining its initial pensiveness. In its subtly evocative aura and persuasive handling of tonality, moreover, this piece can rank with the most significant British orchestral works of the past two decades.

From the six piano concertos that Mozart wrote for his subscription concerts during the mid-1780s, the Twenty-Second is likely the least often heard. A pity, when its relatively expansive form and unpredictability of content are striking even in the context of this most exploratory phase from the composer’s output. Certainly, it is a piece of which Sarah Beth Briggs had the measure – whether in the forceful impetus of its opening Allegro, winsome interplay between soloist and woodwind in the central Andante (arguably the most eloquent among Mozart’s sets of variations) or blithe unfolding of a final Rondo afforded greater pathos by the ‘harmonien’ episode whose interposing was an inspired departure. Nor were Dennis Matthews’s succinct and artfully integrated cadenzas other than an enhancement of what was a fine performance.

Not that there was there anything routine about Beethoven’s Pastoral following the interval, a worthy successor to those performances of the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies that Woods and the ESO have given in recent concerts. Thus, a purposeful though never inflexible take on the opening movement left sufficient room to characterize its reflective asides, with the ‘Scene by the brook’ even more engrossing through its homogeneity of texture and seamless continuity; the closing bird-calls elegantly phrased and enticingly integrated into the whole.

Too rapid a tempo for the scherzo left Woods with insufficient room to point up contrasts in motion with its trio sections, but the Thunderstorm was finely rendered as an extended introduction into the finale – this Shepherd’s Song emerging as the formal and emotional culmination in all respects. Not the least of these strengths was an inevitability of progress – here maintained right through to a coda of serene poise and, in the process, underlining the degree to which any vestige of self has been sublimated into the enveloping cosmic dance.

An absorbing performance as made one look forward to further Beethoven symphonies from this source. Woods and ESO are in Worcester at the weekend with two concerts as part of the Autumn Elgar Festival, the first featuring the masterly Elegy for Strings by Harold Truscott.

Further information on the ESO’s current season can be found at their website. For more on composer Philip Sawyers, visit his website here, while more on pianist Sarah Beth Briggs can be found at her website