Philharmonia Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins
William Mival
Vale – a pastoral symphony (2022-23)
Tristan – still (2003)
Pluen (feather) (2018)
Signum Classics SIGCD977 [57’13”]
Producer Stephen Johns Engineer Mike Hatch
Recorded 21 & 22 May 2024 at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Signum Classics issues the first album devoted to William Mival (b.1959), featuring his three most significant orchestral works which also amounts to a representative overview of his output, all being heard in persuasive readings by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins.
What’s the music like?
Best known for almost two decades as Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music, as for his frequent broadcasts on Radio 3, Mival has created an output of a quality out of all proportion to its quantity. Many will first have encountered his music through the orchestral piece On the Ringstreet (1996), its lively traversal of Vienna’s Ringtrasse and acute punning on familiar passages from 19th century opera leaving a very different impression from these pieces and not least because of their preoccupation with interiorized emotional ‘landscapes’.
Premiered prior to a concert presentation of the third act from Tristan und Isolde, and what might be termed a ‘symphonic adagio’, Tristan – still finds Mival integrating elements from that opera in the context of a string quartet Wagner left unrealized in the mid-1860s and the speculative orchestral piece Stille und Umkehr by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. This is music which unfolds inferentially as it variously touches on without needing to embrace a musical Romanticism that, of necessity, remains tantalizingly and unself-consciously beyond reach.
Over a decade had elapsed before Mival returned to composition in earnest – his subsequent orchestral piece being Pluen. Its Welsh title refers to the three heraldic feathers in the Prince of Wales’s coat of arms, duly translated into three variations on the folksong Y Glomen (The Dove) with a brief introduction then a more extended conclusion. Here the composer places himself in a lineage of British musical landscapes, for all that his metamorphic thinking feels more audibly aligned with that of Austro-German composers at the start of the 20th century.
From here to Vale is to find Mival reinforcing his overt while never inhibited take on tonality in what he calls a ‘pastoral symphony’; one whose six continuous sections imply a Classical structure in outline as they draw inspiration from the region of Clywd, adjacent to where the composer was born. Here again, however, the music admits a distinctly European sensibility with its methodical progress toward an ecstatic culmination before concluding in the deftest transcendence. Suffice to add its first section’s ‘Senza ironia’ marking holds good throughout.
Does it all work?
Yes, assuming one responds to Mival’s often oblique yet always sincere response to musical Romanticism. Certainly, those who appreciate such as David Matthews, Philip Sawyers and the more recent works of Robert Saxton should find themselves readily engrossed with what is on offer. It helps that the Philharmonia is so attuned in its playing, and Martyn Brabbins’s direction so unobtrusive in its authority. A pity that earlier piece was not included, but it can be heard on the Royal College of Music YouTube channel
Is it recommended?
Indeed, not least as the sound serves the music ideally and the annotations are so informative. It is to be hoped the release of this album will encourage greater interest in Mival’s output as a whole, with maybe a collection of his various chamber and ensemble works as a follow-up.
Listen / Buy
You can explore purchase options at the Signum Records website, and listen to excerpts from the album at Presto Music. Click on the names to read more about composer William Mival, conductor Martyn Brabbins and the Philharmonia Orchestra
Published post no.2,913 – Wednesday 10 June 2026
Arcana.fm 