Tag Archives: Sir Arthur Bliss

On Record – BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Michael Seal – Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals, Metamorphic Variations (Chandos)

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Michael Seal

Bliss
Miracle in the Gorbals, F6 (1944)
Metamorphic Variations, F122 (1972)

Chandos CHSA5370 [79’57”]
Producer Brian Pidgeon Engineers Stephen Rinker, Owain Williams (Miracle in the Gorbals), Amy Brennan (Metamorphic Variations)

Recorded 27 February 2025 (Metamorphic Variations), 1 March 2025 (Miracle in the Gorbals), MediaCity UK, Salford, Manchester

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Chandos issues the most important release of music by Arthur Bliss for the 50th anniversary of his death – coupling the second of his four ballets, in its new critical edition, with the last as well as the most ambitious of his orchestral works in what is its first complete recording

What’s the music like?

With its striking choreography from Robert Helpmann (after the story by Robert Benthall), Miracle in the Gorbals was initially even more successful than its predecessor Checkmate – being revived annually between 1944 and 1950. Other than a 1958 revival, however, there was no more stagings until that by Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2014; not least because the magic realism that transcends an otherwise grimly realistic scenario and struck a resonance in wartime Britain became passé soon afterward. Yet the quality of a score as finds Bliss at his most populist but also most uncompromising cannot be denied, and this new recording conveys these extremes in full measure. Hearing sections III (The Girl Suicide), X (Dance of Deliverance) and XV (The Killing of the Stranger) ought to banish any lingering doubts.

Premiered at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls during April 1973, Metamorphic Variations is Bliss’s lengthiest orchestral work. Shorter than intended, even so, with two sections being omitted at its first hearing and subsequently. This recording sees their belated and rightful reinstatement.

The three primary ideas are outlined in Elements: an oboe cantilena, a phrase for horns then strings, and a cluster from woodwind – melodic, rhythmic and harmonic possibilities that are explored intensively in what follows. The additional sections are an atmospheric Contrasts, whose absence has been to the detriment of overall balance, then a Children’s March which pivots from innocence to experience. Highlights include an increasingly animated Polonaise and Funeral Processions with its anguished culmination. Towards the close, a proclamatory Dedication duly underlines the inscription to artist George Dannatt and his wife Ann, then Affirmation draws those initial elements into a sustained peroration that pointedly subsides into a return of the oboe cantilena which, in turn, brings the closing withdrawal into silence.

Do the performances work?

Although the concert suite from Miracle in the Gorbals has received persuasive accounts by the composer (EMI/Warner) and Paavo Berglund (Warner), the complete ballet has only been recorded by Christopher Lyndon-Gee with the Queensland Symphony (Naxos) – compared to which this latest version, aside from its using the critical edition by Ben Earle, is superior in playing and recording. Here, as in Metamorphic Variations, the BBC Philharmonic responds assuredly to Michael Seal whose interpretative stance is distinctively his own. This latter has been recorded by Barry Wordsworth (Nimbus) and David Lloyd-Jones (Naxos), along with a broadcast from Vernon Handley (BBC Radio Classics), but the newcomer’s conviction gives it an advantage apart from those variations whose reinstatement enhances the work’s stature.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least given the spaciousness and realism of its SACD sound, together with informative notes from Ben Earle and Andrew Burn. Is it too much to hope Chandos will yet tackle either of Bliss’s operas which, along with The Golden Cantata, are his only significant works still to be commercially recorded? Michael Seal would be the ideal candidate to do so.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Chandos website, or you can listen to the symphonies on Tidal. Click on the names to read more about the Arthur Bliss Society, conductor Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Published post no.2,783 – Friday 30 January 2026

In concert – Laurence Kilsby, Christopher Parkes, Sinfonia of London / John Wilson: Serenade @ Barbican Hall, London

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Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Christopher Parkes (horn), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings Op.31 (1943)
Bliss Music for Strings B66 (1935)
Delius arr. Fenby Late Swallows (1916, arr. 1962)
Elgar Introduction and Allegro Op.47 (1904-05)

Barbican Hall, London
Wednesday 22 October 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

One can only commend John Wilson and Sinfonia of London for, in addition to an ambitious recording schedule for Chandos, frequently taking its programmes on tour – as has been the case with this judicious selection of works for string orchestra tonight being heard in London.

There could hardly be an acoustic less suited to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia than that of Barbican Hall, yet Wilson went a good deal of the way toward making it succeed by having the main string body – and solo quartet – to the front of the platform with the subsidiary group arrayed along its rear. The outer section were taken slowly and almost impassively, but there was no lack of impetus or fervency as the central phase built cumulatively towards its climax.

The relatively modest number of strings seemed ideally suited to Britten’s Serenade. Laurence Kilsby (who made a fine contribution to Bliss’s The Beatitudes at this year’s Proms) brought real tenderness to Pastorale and ardour to Nocturne, while Christopher Parkes was suitably plangent in Elegy and dextrousness itself in Dirge. Tenor and hornist joined delightfully in Hymn, then Wilson drew playing of fastidious poise in Sonnet. Just a little unsteady in the Prologue, Parkes excelled in the offstage Epilogue with its ethereal reprise of that opening music – so rounding off a performance that proved affecting and unaffected in equal measure.

Live and in the studio, Wilson has affirmed a commitment to the music of Bliss which could hardly have been more evident than in Music for Strings which formed the centrepiece of this concert. It had been written for the Vienna Philharmonic to premiere at the Salzburg Festival and, if its formidable technical demands no longer sound forbidding, there can have been few performances of this virtuosity or insight. Trenchant and impulsive, the opening Allegro was followed by an Andante whose sustained eloquence never excluded lightness of touch – with the speculative transition into the final Allegro as deftly handled as the Presto with which this work surges to its headlong close. Not merely a timely revival, this was no less a vindication.

Introducing this second half, Wilson had remarked how Delius’ music needs to be coaxed into yielding up its secrets as surely as it needs selling to the musicians. Late Swallows succeeded on both fronts. As arranged by Eric Fenby from the composer’s only mature string quartet, it takes its place among the latter’s most haunting evocations, and not least in a central section whose rapt intensity brought an emotional frisson that tangibly held its listeners spellbound.

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro may, by contrast, be a piece that plays itself but it still calls for interpretive input of a high order. Wilson responded with an unusually swift reading such as emphasized its nervous intensity and often volatile changes of mood, though there was no lack of cohesion or underlying momentum in a performance that took such testing passages as the central fugato assuredly in its stride prior to a glowing apotheosis then decisive close.

A performance, moreover, as set the seal on a memorable evening’s music-making. All these pieces, save the Britten, have been recorded by Wilson and Sinfonia of London for Chandos, their advocacy of Bliss hopefully continuing well beyond this 50th anniversary of his death.

Click here to read Arcana’s review of English Music for Strings, the Chandos album containing the Bliss and Vaughan Williams works performed in this concert.

Click also on the links for more information on the Sinfonia of London and their conductor John Wilson, along with soloists Laurence Kilsby and Christopher Parkes. For more information on Bliss, you can visit the Arthur Bliss Society

Published post no.2,697 – Friday 24 October 2025

New music – BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Michael Seal – Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals; Metamorphic Variations (Chandos)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

An important new release in the Sir Arthur Bliss anniversary year, from a record company who have done so much to advance the cause of the composer. This is the recording made around a concert in Nottingham in February, where the Metamorphic Variations were appraised by Arcana’s Richard Whitehouse.

Chandos write in their press release: “Perhaps now overshadowed by his earlier ballet Checkmate, Miracle in the Gorbals was a tremendous hit for Bliss and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company. First performed in 1944, it was repeated in every season through to 1950. Based on a scenario by Michael Benthall (inspired by Jerome K. Jerome and Dostoyevsky), the ballet features the appearance of a Christ-like figure amid Glasgow’s most infamous slum. This mysterious Stranger performs a miracle, reviving the Girl Suicide, who in despair had earlier thrown herself into the Clyde. The locals rejoice, but an Official (Benthall had in mind a priest) is jealous and, after a failed attempt to cast doubt on the virtue of the Stranger via the local Prostitute, has him slashed to death by a razor gang.

Bliss’s score employs a wide range of styles and harmonic language, and also exploits Leitmotifs for the principal characters. Originally titled Variations for Orchestra, Bliss composed the Metamorphic Variations towards the end of his life, during a late surge of creativity. Two of the sixteen movements were dropped before the first performance (given by the LSO and Vernon Handley in 1973) and for some reason were not re-instated at any of the later performances of the work until that given by Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in February 2025, the day before they made this recording.

Published post no.2,690 – Friday 17 October 2025

In concert – Lukas Sternath, BBC Singers, Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Sakari Oramo @ BBC Proms: Bliss ‘The Beatitudes’, Grieg & Gipps

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Lukas Sternath (piano), Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

Gipps Death on the Pale Horse Op.25 (1943) [Proms premiere]
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868 rev.1907)
Bliss The Beatitudes F28 (1961)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sunday 7 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

This evening’s Prom – launching the final week of the present season – was billed as ‘Grieg’s Piano Concerto’, no doubt the reason why many in the audience were attending while hardly being the most interesting aspect of a typically adventurous programme from Sakari Oramo.

In the event the Grieg received a responsive reading from Lukas Sternath (below, with Oramo), the Viennese pianist who, still in his mid-20s, was most at home in more inward passages. The second theme of the initial Allegro was enticingly taken up after a heartfelt rendering by cellos, as was the Adagio’s eloquent melody and that first emerging in the finale on flute, where it was soulfully rendered by Daniel Pailthorpe. Nor were the more demonstrative aspects underplayed – Sternath having the measure of a cadenza whose mounting rhetoric was pointedly reined-in, while the finale’s outer sections were incisively inflected prior to an apotheosis which felt the more exhilarating through its absence of bathos. A melting take on Richard Strauss’ early song Morgen!, transcribed with enviable poise by Max Reger, served to reinforce Sternath’s formidable pianistic credentials.

The 50th anniversary year of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death has seen a gratifying number of revivals, few more significant than that of The Beatitudes. The misfortune of its premiere having been moved from Coventry’s new Cathedral to its Belgrade Theatre, thus freeing up rehearsal time for Britten’s War Requiem, rather condemned it as an also-ran from the outset. Yet Bliss had created a piece unerringly suited for the consecration in what, in itself, remains an impressive conception. Unfolding as 14 short sections which can be grouped into six larger movements, this is less a cantata than a choral symphony. Setting all nine Beatitudes, Bliss none the less merged several of these and interspersed them with settings from three 17th-century and one 20th-century ‘metaphysical’ poets to commemorate the past from the vantage of the present.

The texts, drawn from Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Jeremy Taylor, anticipate a future redemption – as, more ambivalently, does Dylan Thomas in And death shall have dominion which builds implacably to the climactic Ninth Beatitude and Voices of the Mob prior to the hard-won serenity of the Epilogue. That The Beatitudes has enjoyed relatively few revivals is less to do with its intrinsic quality than the demands of its choral writing, to which the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers did notable justice. Elizabeth Watts responded with real sensitivity and perception to some radiant soprano writing and while Laurence Kilsby was a little effortful in the more demonstrative passages, he brought conviction to a tenor role both fervent and compassionate. Nor did Richard Pearce disappoint with his extensive organ part.

Oramo paced the 50-minute entity superbly as to make one hope he will tackle more works by Bliss – not least the masterly Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, which has inexplicably fallen through the net this year. He had started tonight’s concert with a most welcome revival for Death on the Pale Horse – the succinctly eventful tone poem by Ruth Gipps which, while it might not capture the visceral drama of Blake’s eponymous engraving, distils an evocative atmosphere from pithy initial ideas that audibly reflects the circumstances of its composition.

Click on the artist names to read more about soloists Elizabeth Watts, Laurence Kilsby and Lukas Sternath, the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra, and their conductor Sakari Oramo. You can also click to read more about composers Arthur Bliss, Ruth Gipps and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,652 – Tuesday 9 September 2025

In concert – Three Choirs Festival: Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra / Adrian Partington – Howells Hymnus Paradisi & Bliss Mary of Magdala

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Rebecca Hardwick (soprano), Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), Michael Bell (tenor), Malachy Frame (baritone), Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra / Adrian Partington

Howells Paradise Rondel (1925)
Bliss Mary of Magdala (1962)
Howells Hymnus Paradisi (1936-38)

Hereford Cathedral
Wednesday 30 July 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Dale Hodgetts (Dame Sarah Connolly, Festival Chorus), James O’Driscoll (Hereford Cathedral, Rebecca Hardwick, Adrian Partington)

Interesting that all three works comprising this concert were premiered at the Three Choirs in Gloucester or Worcester but they were, for the most part, admirably suited to the less opulent while always spacious ambience of Hereford Cathedral in what was a welcome retrospective.

Upsurge of Arthur Bliss performances in this fiftieth anniversary of his death continued with Mary of Magdala, essentially a cantata albeit with an element of operatic scena in the intense characterization of its title-role. Compiled by Christopher Hassall (the last collaboration with Bliss before his untimely death), its text finds Mary approaching the sepulchre where Christ’s body has been placed after crucifixion only to find it gone – Christ having assumed the guise of a gardener who bestows his blessing upon this most maligned yet most loyal of his circle.

The main part was given by Dame Sarah Connolly (above) with her customary fervour and insight, not least in the final stages after recognition when the music exudes a radiant gentleness rarely, if ever, encountered in Bliss hitherto. Malachy Frame drew an understated strength from the brief yet crucial role of Christus, but excessively large choral numbers rather compromised the relative intimacy of the music. Not that it seriously undermined the conviction of a timely revival for what is one of the least known though inherently personal among the composer’s later works.

It stayed under-wraps for over a decade after completion, but Hymnus Paradisi has long been the best known of Herbert Howells’s larger pieces and something like a ‘sacred text’ in Three Choirs culture. Written after the death of the composer’s son, it is avowedly music within the English choral tradition; not least that Gerontius-like aura of a Preludio (actually written last) whose yearning theme pervades what follows. The Requiem aeternam further intensifies such introspection, and if a setting of Psalm 23 tends towards the discursive, even generalized, that of Psalm 121 has a rapture that builds on an effervescent Sanctus in what is the most arresting section. A ruminative setting from The Burial Service precedes the impulsiveness of that from Salisbury Diurnal, with the return of the Requiem aeternam bringing about a fatalistic repose.

Something of a staple at these festivals it might be, Hymnus Paradisi is never an easy work to sustain in performance and tonight’s was a notable though not unqualified success. The vocal parts were well taken, Rebecca Hardwick’s occasional shrillness ostensibly a price to be paid for surmounting those often dense choral textures and Michael Bell making up for in accuracy what he lacked in personality. The sizable orchestral forces of the Philharmonia proved more than equal to the task, not just of balancing but in opening-out the expressive power of choral writing where the Three Choirs Festival Chorus was wholly in its element. Adrian Partington secured an interpretive focus that gained in conviction as the performance unfolded, making for an account which underlined the strengths yet also the weaknesses of this singular work.

It was the earlier and uninhibited Howells which ushered in proceedings. With its translucent orchestration and, at times, almost concertante-like piano part, Paradise Rondel makes for as irresistible a curtain-raiser as it no doubt was evoking that Cotswold hamlet of a century ago.

Published post no.2,615 – Sunday 3 August 2025