Tag Archives: William Wordsworth

On Record – William Wordsworth: Complete Piano Music (Christopher Guild) (Toccata Classics)

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William Wordsworth
Piano Sonata in D minor Op.13 (1938-9)
Three Pieces (1932-4)
Cheesecombe Suite Op.27 (1945)
Ballade Op.41 (1949)
Eight Pieces (all publ. 1952)
Valediction Op.82 (1967)

Christopher Guild (piano)

Toccata Classics TOCC0697 [81’08”]
Producer and Engineer Adaq Khan

Recorded 13 April, 29 May 2022 at Old Granary Studios, Beccles, 2 April 2023, Wyastone Hall, Monmouthshire (Three Pieces)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics intersperses its continuing survey of William Wordsworth’s orchestral music with a release devoted to that for solo piano, including several works not otherwise recorded and all ably performed by Christopher Guild, who already features prominently on this label.

What’s the music like?

Although not a large part of his catalogue, piano music features prominently in Wordsworth’s earlier output – notably a Piano Sonata that ranks among the finest of the inter-war period. Its first movement is introduced by a Maestoso whose baleful tone informs the impetuous while expressively volatile Allegro. The central Largamente probes more equivocal and ambivalent emotion before leading into the final Allegro, its declamatory and martial character offset by the plangent recall of earlier material prior to a denouement of surging and inexorable power.

His status as conscientious objector found Wordsworth engaged in farm-work in wartime, the experience duly being commemorated in his Cheesecombe Suite whose pensive Prelude and dextrous Fughetta frame a quizzical Scherzo then a Nocturne of affecting pathos. Written for Clifford Curzon, Ballade is a methodical study in contrasts which makes an ideal encore; as, too, might Valediction – though here the emotions run deeper and more obliquely, as befits this inward memorial to a lifelong friend from comparatively late in its composer’s creativity.

This release rounds out our knowledge of Wordsworth’s piano music with two collections not previously recorded. Among his earliest surviving works, the Three Pieces comprise a taciturn Prelude, fleeting Scherzo then soulful Rhapsody which between them find the composer trying out whole-tone figuration with resourcefulness but also a self-consciousness that might have decided him against publishing. Published by Alfred Lengnick as part of its five-volume educational series Five by Ten, the eight miniatures wear their didactic intention lightly; only one of these exceeding two minutes, yet all evince a technical skill that is never facile along with a pertinent sense of evocation that should commend them to amateurs and professionals alike. Here, as often elsewhere, Wordsworth proves a ‘less is more’ composer of distinction.

Does it all work?

Very much so and Christopher Guild, with admirable surveys of Ronald Stevenson (Toccata) and Bernard Van Dieren (Piano Classics) to his credit, is a natural interpreter of often elusive yet always rewarding music. His charged and often impetuous take on the Sonata has more in common with the pioneering account by Margaret Kitchin (Lyrita) than the overtly rhetorical one by Richard Deering (Heritage). Similarly, his approach to the Cheesecombe Suite and the Ballade draws out their depths if occasionally at the expense of their expressive immediacy. Interestingly, Valediction is played from a copy by Stevenson that alters aspects of keyboard layout or pedalling if not the notes themselves; resulting in a greater emotional ambivalence and textural intricacy which Wordsworth, had he heard it, would most likely have endorsed.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, not least when the sound of both Steinway D’s are so faithfully conveyed and Guild’s annotations are so perceptive. Those who have the Deering release should consider acquiring this one also, while those new to this music need not hesitate in making this their first choice.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Christopher Guild and composer William Wordsworth.

Published post no.2,500 – Thursday 10 April 2025

On Record: Richard Deering – William Wordsworth: Piano Music; Wilson & McGuire (Heritage)

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Wordsworth
Piano Sonata in D minor Op.13 (1939)
Cheesecombe Suite Op.27 (1945)
Ballade Op.41 (1949)
Valediction Op.82 (1967)
Wilson
Incanabula (1983)
McGuire
Prelude 7 (1983)
Six Small Pieces in C (1971)

Richard Deering (piano)

Heritage HTGCD142 [77’42’’]
Producer/Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor (Piano Sonata), Robert Matthew-Walker
Recorded 1985 at University of Wales, Cardiff, 2023 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage here continues its extensive coverage of British music with a release of piano music primarily by William Wordsworth, complemented with short pieces by Thomas Wilson and Edward McGuire, all of them heard in idiomatic and insightful readings by Richard Deering.

What’s the music like?

Although his music is now relatively well covered in terms of recording (thanks to Lyrita and, more recently, Toccata Classics), Wordsworth remains a difficult composer to pin down – not least because this understated and often taciturn idiom does not lend itself to casual listening.

Piano music features prominently in his earlier output, notably a Piano Sonata that can rank with the finest such works from the inter-war period. Its initial movement is introduced by a Maestoso whose baleful tone informs the impetuous and expressively volatile Allegro that follows. The central Largamente probes more equivocal and ambivalent emotions before it leads directly into a final Allegro whose declamatory and often martial character is briefly offset by an aching recall of previous material, prior to a conclusion of inexorable power.

His status as conscientious objector saw Wordsworth engaged in farm-work during wartime, the experiences and friendships of this time being commemorated in the Cheesecombe Suite whose lilting Prelude and lively Fughetta frame a quizzical Scherzo then a Nocturne of affecting pathos. Written for Clifford Curzon, Ballade is a methodical study in contrasts that makes for an ideal encore; as, too, might Valediction, but here emotions run deeper and more elusively as befits this memorial to a lifelong friend written later in the composer’s maturity.

As with Wordsworth, Thomas Wilson was an incomer to Scotland (albeit from the United States rather than England), and Incanabula typifies the searching though accessible quality of his later music – the six sections unfolding as if variants on each other before concluding in a mood whose calmness does not preclude a degree of restiveness. Scottish by birth and among the most wide-ranging composers of his generation (not least through a half-century association with traditional group The Whistlebinkies), Edward McGuire has written widely for piano – notably a series of Preludes, of which the seventh integrates minimalist and folk elements into its fluid and cumulative overall design. Simpler as to form and expression, Six Small Pieces in C Major evoke Satie and Cage in their lucid textures and disarming naivete.

Does it all work?

It does, and not least when Deering is so evidently attuned to this music – having premiered the Wilson piece and MacGuire Prelude. Margaret Kitchin recorded those three earlier pieces by Wordsworth in the 1960s (Lyrita), and Christopher Guild recently set down all four items with various miniatures in his complete survey (Toccata), but those wanting the major works cannot go wrong with this anthology. Other than McGuire, booklet notes are by John Dodd – a tireless advocate of British music with whom this reviewer was fortunate to be acquainted.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The sound has a clarity and focus such as belies the almost four decades between the two sessions, and this makes a worthwhile follow-up to Deering’s recent collection of piano music by Parry [HTGCD140-141]. Hopefully there will be further releases from this source.

Listen & Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website, and find out more about Richard Deering here. Meanwhile for more on the composers, click on the names William Wordsworth, Thomas Wilson and Edward McGuire.

Published post no.1,983 – Thursday 19 October 2023

On record – William Wordsworth: Orchestral Music Vol.4 (Toccata Classics)

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wordsworth-4

Liepāja Symphony Orchestra / John Gibbons

William Wordsworth
Jubilation Op.78 (1965)
A Spring Festival Overture Op.90 (1970)
Confluence Op.100 (1976)
Symphony No. 7, Op. 107, ‘Cosmos’ (1980)

Toccata Classics TOCC0618 [59’21”]

Producer Normands Slāva
Engineer Jānis Straume

Recorded 4-5 February and 16-18 June 2021, Amber Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its survey of William Wordsworth’s orchestral music with a fourth volume featuring the composer’s Seventh Symphony, alongside three other pieces that reflect his increasing concentration and refinement of thought during those latter decades of his life.

What’s the music like?

If the Fifth Symphony and Cello Concerto (recorded on TOCC0600) represent a highpoint of Wordsworth’s orchestral output, the works that follow are only relatively less ambitious and equally personal. The four heard here appeared at five-year intervals. Subtitled ‘A Festivity for Orchestra’, Jubilation is akin to a ‘concerto for orchestra’ in its intensive while unshowy pursual of those possibilities inherent in its opening fanfare-like idea; one which returns near the close of this engaging piece to provide a rounding-off of good-humoured decisiveness.

A Spring Festival Overture is even more self-contained in its demeanour, though the gradual emergence of activity out of the sombre introduction is a telling metaphor for the coming of this season and the musical discourse attracts attention purely through its dexterity of thought.

Had Confluence been Wordsworth’s ‘sixth symphony’, no-one could surely have doubted its rightness given this music’s motivic density and textural subtlety. As it is, these ‘Symphonic Variations’ are a notable staging-post in the composer’s odyssey towards ever more distilled expression – the variations proceeding as distinct yet interrelated episodes where most of the instruments have a soloistic spot. The penultimate section, with its allusion to Elgar’s Violin Concerto, finds Words worth at his most felicitous and the final build-up at his most visceral.

Scored for comparably sizable forces, the Seventh Symphony continues a process of formal elaboration across a single, unbroken span – its seven sections less a series of variations as a succession of paraphrases on ideas which are nothing if not rarefied. Appropriate, then, that its ‘Cosmos’ subtitle should embody a lifelong fascination with the universe – whether in its astronomical or spiritual dimensions. Inclusion of a prepared tape suggests something more radical than is the case – pre-recorded material limited to two slowly repeating string chords that recur at crucial formal and expressive junctures to channel underlying momentum over   a course inevitable as to its ultimate destination. Paul Conway’s booklet note implies this as being Wordsworth’s most original orchestral work and the present writer would not disagree.

Does it all work?

Yes, though this is not the place to start for anyone new to Wordsworth’s music (the previous instalment with the Fifth Symphony makes for an ideal point of entry). Playing the works in chronological order (rather than Opp. 90, 107, 78 and 100 as on this disc) reveals ever greater focus on motivic essentials allied to an understated while often questing harmonic sense that may have reflected their composer’s immersion in the Scottish East Highlands or the wisdom accrued with age, yet the experience feels never less than absorbing and sometimes profound.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The playing of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra is comparable to that on earlier volumes, while John Gibbons directs with his customary ear for detail and care for balance. Hopefully a fifth volume, perhaps including the hitherto unheard Sixth Symphony, will not be long in coming.

Read, listen and Buy

You can read Richard’s review of the first three volumes in the Wordsworth series on Arcana, clicking here for the first volume, here for the second and here for the third

You can listen to clips and purchase this disc from the Toccata Classics website. For more information on WIlliam Wordsworth, click here. For more on the performers on this recordings, click on the names for websites devoted to John Gibbons and the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra respectively.

On record – William Wordsworth: Orchestral Music Vol.3 (Toccata Classics)

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wordsworth-3

Florian Arnicans (cello), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra / John Gibbons

William Wordsworth
Symphony no.5 in A minor Op.68 (1957-60)
Cello Concerto Op.73 (1963)

Toccata Classics TOCC0600 [65’55”]

Producer Normands Slāva
Engineer Jānis Straume

Recorded 1-5 February 2021, Amber Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its series devoted to the orchestral works of William Wordsworth (1908-88) in a coupling of two pieces from around the turn of the 1960s, when the changing priorities of the British musical establishment meant such music was increasingly overlooked.

What’s the music like?

Although it had to wait over a decade before its first performance in January 1975 (perhaps as it was written with no specific soloist in mind), the Cello Concerto is unerringly conceived for this instrument – not least the substantial opening Allegretto whose brusque initial orchestral tutti hardly prepares one for the wide-ranging if never discursive dialogue that follows. There is a lengthy and developmental cadenza before a reprise which continues the evolution of its pithy ideas prior to the ruminative close. Designated Nocturne, the ensuing Lento is among Wordsworth’s most atmospheric slow movements; the cello’s eloquent main theme provides a focal point thrown into relief by woodwind via a series of haunting asides, without seriously undermining the repose made tangible in the evocative closing bars. The final Allegro vivace is centred on a lively, even nonchalant refrain whose trenchant rhythmic profile comes to the fore in a fugal section whose accrued energy subsides into a musing solo passage – from out of which the earlier repartee continues through to a decisive while not a little sardonic coda.

Although premiered in 1962 and broadcast thereafter, the Fifth Symphony only now receives its first commercial recording – a pity, given this is arguably Wordsworth’s most emotionally involving such piece. A calmly undulating ‘motto’ at the outset is heard in three guises over each of three movements. Thematic in the initial Andante maestoso, its supplicatory writing for strings complemented with plangent woodwind in a discourse where the slowly emergent ‘landscape’ may well be that of the mind – not least its quietly ecstatic writing for solo violin toward the close. Rhythmic in the central Allegro, a scherzo whose spectral writing for tuned percussion and upper woodwind has more than a little malevolence – even with a whimsical trio to provide contrast. Its recalcitrant ebbing away makes the finale’s slow introduction the more striking, strings building to an expressive apex from where the Allegro begins. Here the harmonic aspect of the ‘motto’ is dominant, episodes of tensile fugato alternating with gentler asides on the way to an apotheosis whose affirmation is necessarily tempered by experience.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that both pieces find Wordsworth’s often elusive tonal language at its most searching. Florian Arnicans cannot have known the Cello Concerto before these sessions, but he captures its brooding understatement with undoubted assurance and thereby reinforces its claim to be the deepest and most substantial of this composer’s concertante works. The Fifth Symphony can be heard in a 1979 studio reading by Stewart Robson with the BBC Scottish Symphony (Lyrita), but Gibbons reveals more fully why it is likely the highlight of Wordsworth’s cycle.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The playing of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra is on a par with that of the previous two instalments in this series, and Paul Conway contributes his usual thorough booklet notes. Good to hear the fourth volume in this series, featuring the Seventh Symphony, is imminent.

Read, listen and Buy

You can read Richard’s review of the first two volumes in the Wordsworth series on Arcana, clicking here for the first volume and here for the second

You can listen to clips and purchase this disc from the Toccata Classics website. For more information on WIlliam Wordsworth, click here. For more on the performers on this recordings, click on the names for websites devoted to Florian Arnicans, John Gibbons and the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra respectively.

On record – William Wordsworth: Orchestral Music Vol.2 (Toccata Classics)

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Kamila Bydlowska (violin), Arta Arnicane (piano), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra / John Gibbons

William Wordsworth
Piano Concerto in D minor Op.28 (1946)
Three Pastoral Sketches Op.10 (1937)
Violin Concerto in A major Op.60 (1955)

Toccata Classics TOCC0526 [79’41”]

Producer Normands Slava
Engineer Jānis Straume

Recorded 21-25 January 2019, Amber Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues a further volume of orchestral music by William Wordsworth (1908-88), featuring two highly contrasted concertos alongside the composer’s first acknowledged work for the medium, in persuasive readings by the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra with John Gibbons.

What’s the music like?

Composed in the aftermath of the Second World War, Wordsworth’s Piano Concerto unfolds in five continuous sections. At its centre is an Adagio, its pathos informed by an ominousness that becomes far more confrontational in the two Allegros either side, during which interplay between soloist and orchestra is also at its most combative. Framing these, in turn, is a brief introduction whose understatement belies a motivic resource that is brought full circle in the coda with its mingling of fatalism and defiance. Premiered by John Hunt while dedicated to Clifford Curzon (did he ever actually play it?), this is a compact and effective piece such as ought to have garnered further performances and certainly warrants revival in a live context. Hopefully, this adept as well as committed recording will bring that possibility a little closer.

As should that of the Violin Concerto which, by contrast, ranks among Wordsworth’s most expansive orchestral works. The opening Moderato, alone playing for 15 minutes, is notable for its thematic concentration – its lyrical then contrapuntal ideas being manifestations of the same theme which is duly intensified in the development, though an overly discursive reprise makes the terse coda feel almost too perfunctory. No such doubts over a central Adagio that finds the composer at his most eloquent and builds to a close as affecting as it is inevitable. Following without pause, the final Allegro is essentially a series of variations on its spirited initial theme – replete with imaginative use of percussion and exuding an energy as carries over to the imposing cadenza then a coda whose affirmation Wordsworth seldom equalled.

Placed between these two concertos, the Three Pastoral Sketches might seem lightweight by comparison. In fact, these evocations merge into a purposeful unity with ample indications of the symphonist Wordsworth was soon to become as they proceed from the ruminative poise of Sundown, via the ethereal undulations of Lonely Tarn (Holst and Moeran brought into unlikely accord), then on to the cumulative power of Seascape with its sense of fulfilment just beyond reach. This ranks high among orchestral debuts from Wordsworth’s generation.

Does it all work?

In almost all respects. Special credit to the two soloists, who surely cannot have encountered this music before these sessions but whose dedication and insight can hardly be doubted. Arta Arnicane has all the impetus and incisiveness necessary for the Piano Concerto, while Kamila Bydlowska evinces burnished warmth and a caressing tone ideal for the lyrical expanse of the Violin Concerto. John Gibbons again secures playing of commitment from his Liepāja forces, their lacking the last degree of tension in portions of the concertos being just a minor quibble.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. As with the previous volume, Wordsworth’s music is a ‘slow-burn’ as rewards those who take time to make its acquaintance. Finely recorded and annotated, this can be cordially recommended in anticipation of those numerous works still to be encountered in this series.

Read, listen and Buy

You can read Richard’s review of the first volume in the Wordsworth series on Arcana

You can listen to clips and purchase this disc from the Toccata Classics website