CB Blake
This
is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme 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
Next,
an improvization by the clarinettist, Richard Stolzmann and the
percussion-group, Nexus. Eternal
Triangle Beckons.
Track Two: Eternal Triangle Beckons, Stolzmann/Nexus
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
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
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
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
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
horns. 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 horns ends
the movement.
Track Five: Invocation:
Recitativo-Allegro Deciso .
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
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
