CB
Blake
This is Classical Break on Somer Valley
FM and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s rogramme
was researched and written by Mike Burrows.
Let’s begin with a nocturne of great beauty written for tenor solo, solo
viola, semi-chorus and orchestra, by Sir George Dyson, Night Hath No Wings,
a conflation of verses by Robert Herrick and Isaac Williams. It forms the third movement of a massive “Cycle
of Poems” written for performance at the Three Choirs Festival: Quo Vadis, or in English, Whither
goest thou? The austere timbre of
the viola sets the tone for what follows:
an arioso not far removed in melodic or harmonic style from those of the
Seventeenth Century of Herrick - incidentally, Isaac Williams was a Victorian and
follower of the Oxford Movement. Dyson
sets the words with modest aptness, but smouldering intensity in which
voice, viola and strings vie in pathos, woodwind - flute and clarinet -introducing
a kind of sickroom closeness. Pizzicati
punctuate.
Night
hath no wings for him that cannot sleep;
And
time seems then not to fly, but creep;
Slowly
her chariot drives as if that she
Had
broke her wheel...
In
the hour of my distress,
When
temptations me oppress...
When
God knows I’m tossed about
Either
with despair or doubt,
Yet
before the glass be out,
Sweet
spirit, comfort me...
Consolation comes slowly and unsurely with
Isaac Williams’ smoother, longer-lined verse:
Unto
the east we turn with watchful eyes
Where
opens the white haze of silvery lawn
And
the still trees stand in the streak of dawn...
The
sub-chorus sing, first soothingly, then, after further protest from the soloist,
with pizzicato tread of strings...
With a restatement of Herrick’s verse beginning,
In The hour of my distress, comfort is perhaps felt at the close, with
its repetitions of the words comfort me, and a dying fall. Written for the cancelled Three Choirs
Festival of 1939, Quo Vadis was performed in full only in 1949.
Track
One: Quo Vadis, Night Hath No
Wings, Dyson (10.30 min)
Next, an improvization by the
clarinettist, Richard Stolzmann and the percussion-group, Nexus. Eternal Triangle Beckons.
Track
Two: Eternal Triangle Beckons,
Stolzmann/Nexus (6.23 min)
Now, a group of orchestral songs by the
Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, all performed by Kirsten Flagstad, and the
London Symphony Orchestra, under Oivin Fjelstad. These are marvellously idiomatic
renderings. First off, Since Then I
have Questioned No Further, a setting of a poem by Runeberg, dates
from early in its composer’s career, and was praised for its folkishly
lyrical quality by no less a figure than Johannes Brahms, when performed at a
soiree in Vienna. In his maturity,
Sibelius orchestrated the song in customary neutral tones of
effectiveness.
Why
is Spring so fleeting,
Why
does Summer never last
Thus
did I used to wonder
And
ask many a person in vain...
Track
Three: Since Then I have Questioned No
Further, Sibelius (2.22 min)
But My Bird Is Nowhere To Be Seen is a song from Sibelius’ maturity,
around the time of his Second Symphony, and instinct with pity and sadness that
gnaws at the heart of mankind whatever the season. The poem is again by Runeberg. A girl longs for her lover, who does not
return with Spring, the swan, the lark, the curlew...
Track
Four: But My Bird Is Nowhere To Be Seen,
Sibelius (2.43 min)
The last of our Sibelius songs today is
To The Night, a setting of AV Forsman-Koskiemies from the period of Since
Then I have Questioned No Further. The
spirit of the singer hastens to meet comforting night.
Track
Five: To The Night, Sibelius (1.36 min)
Now, a work for trumpet solo and string
orchestra by the Armenian--Scottish American composer, Alan Hovhaness. The great crisis in his career - rejection by
his teachers at Tanglewood Music School after the award of a scholarship - was
two years behind him when he set to work on this piece. It portrays a heroic priest, the eponymous
Khrimian Hairig, who led his people through many persecutions. The trumpet intones as the voice of this man,
the strings’ block--chordal responses growing in fervour and canonic
contrapuntal independence. Armenian
semitones spice modal forms of chant. There are moments of holy calm as at the
beginning. The fullest statement of the
melodic material is reserved until the close, and broadens in typical idealistic
statement, the trumpet like a golden crown.
The piece is subdivided into three sections: The Chalice of Holiness; Wings of
Compassion and The Triumph of Faith.
Khrimian Hairig, by Alan Hovhaness.
Track
6: Khrimian Hairig, Alan Hovhaness (7.39
min)
Our last work today is the Clarinet
Concerto by Howard Blake. Blake, a
Londoner born in 1938, studied as a pianist and composer at the Royal Academy
of Music, his lessons in composition given by the Belfast-born
pianist-composer, Howard Ferguson. His catalogue
of works is massive, running into over nine hundred opus numbers: but he has worked intensively as an
accompanist and conductor, this secondary hectic career involving much travel
and exposure to many styles of music ranging from pop, through jazz, to modern
art-music. A brilliant pasticheur, he
has written much music in a tonal idiom recognizably influenced by that of his own
teacher, Ferguson, Gerald Finzi, Hindemith, Delius and Peter Warlock. You will know him by his music for the film, The
Snowman.
It is fair to say that this
much-commissioned composer has an ability to create music that is sometimes
described as ‘accessible’. The idiom is
approachable and recognizably of a tradition.
It’s not revolutionary in style, and for
many decades, this was to say that music was dull or fake: in the days when a culture
of ‘lightning war’ seems to have been the anti-aesthetic believed on by all fashionable
terrible infants and BBC Controllers.
Blake’s Concerto is structurally akin
to that by Gerald Finzi (who was himself under-appreciated by movers and shakers
in his life-time), and covers much the same emotional range, beginning with a
flourish - though one provided by the soloist rather than strings. The first movement, Invocation:
Recitativo-Moderato, Molto Deciso,
opens in near-blues, which are supplanted by a mediaeval chant-sounding
first subject coloured by the clarinet. Brusque onward movement is held back by
the tug of doubt or sadness, complex canonic or imitational textures or
semitonal sighs. The scoring is harsh,
with many misalliances in instruments’ weaker registers; the sense of
driven-ness not to be put away as the flourish and chant are developed against
an ever-changing background of counterpoint.
The semitonal sighs are heard most affectingly in a moment notable for high violin
harmonics and held notes in the horn.
The inexhaustible energy and variety in the music builds to baroque or
Finzi-like use of high strings with bass accompaniment, leading to a stalking
climax, jabbing Dies Irae unisons punctuating the chant-theme. The opening flourish - and clarinet - enter, and
a slow fading chord coloured by the horn ends the movement.
Track
Five: Invocation: Recitativo-Allegro Deciso (7.51 min) .
The Second Movement, Recitativo -
Lento Serioso, is possibly haunted by Ravel’s piano-piece, Le Ghibet,
another emotionally complex inspiration.
It begins with the flourish that began the first, but soon, the matter
is proved to be a development of the high violin harmonics figure in amongst
the imaginative thematic transformations later on. Again, the horns are involved. The clarinet and violins with cautionary
matter from other parts of the orchestra build to a brief climax - underpinned
by an upward scale - and a lowish consolatory sound is made by horn and
warbling clarinet and other woodwind in exchanges of the melodic line. Tension comes in on the high strings,
stridency bringing back the swaying semitones on misallied woodwind - oboe
noticeable - and brass. Again, the music
seeks to expand, and the oboe has its moment, answered by the clarinet. The upward scale is heard from underneath. Again, there is consolation, and the strings
lead the warmer but quietly peremptory winding-down.
Track
Six: Ceremony: Recitativo-Lento Serioso (7.12 min)
The Finale is a Round Dance, marked
Vivace. An impish variation on the
solo flourish leads to a jog-trot similar to the chant of the first
movement. Woodwind have a counter-melody
that is flat in curve, more blues-like or jazzy and so modern in sound.
It may remind one of the spikier
inspirations of Malcolm Arnold. The clarinet
soon dominates it, as does the opening matter.
The semitonal swaying from the first two movements is heard with
pizzicato accompaniment and what become roulades in the solo-part. The chant-like theme is still there. A crescendo grows with chuckling outbursts
from woodwind and a more haunting air in the clarinet’s restricted figures. The opening music of the rondo returns -
barer, more gaunt. Time is passing, even
the clarinet is audibly flagging - or a final effort is inspired by the
counter-melody, scotched at last by horn and rounded off by woodwind, strings
and brass - the clarinet in at the very last.
This was Classical Break on Somer Valley
FM , and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s
Programme was researched and written by Mike Burrows. We hope that you enjoyed it and will join us
again soon. Goodbye!
Track
Seven: Round Dance: Vivace (6.28 min)
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