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CD and Other Review

Review: Holst: Orchestral Works (BBC Symphony Orchestra/Davis)

How good it is to have such excellent accounts of two major works for voice and orchestra by Holst. The first, dating from 1904 (and revised eight years later) is The Mystic Trumpeter, a setting of Walt Whitman featuring a soprano solo, and the second is the First Choral Symphony, a four-movement work with texts by Keats for soprano, chorus and orchestra. This recording might have come to light some years ago were it not for the untimely death of Richard Hickox in 2008, who passed away just as the project was beginning. Andrew Davis has more than ably assumed Hickox’s mantle and with Susan Gritton (who had begun work with the late conductor) he invests these works with all the colour and drama they demand. In The Mystic Trumpeter the overtly musical references of Whitman’s text help give shape and coherence to Holst’s musical language, allowing the composer to distance himself further from the Wagnerian idioms of which he was overly fond and edge closer to a unique personal style. The varied and often delicate nature of the orchestration allows a clear and effective presentation of Whitman’s paean to love, freedom and joy. Lasting just under 20 minutes, the…

June 15, 2014
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CD and Other Review

Review: Moeran, Vaughan Williams: Violin Concerto, Lark Ascending (Little, BBC Phil/Davis)

British violinist Tasmin Little has been playing Vaughan Williams’ evocation of a lark in flight for most of her career – she and Sir Andrew Davis recorded it 20 years ago for Teldec – but this new recording on Chandos is something else altogether. It’s not just that Little’s tone is nigh on ideal, capable of an extraordinary ethereal sweetness, but her sense of phrasing makes the whole work into one long melody, seemingly untroubled by bar lines. Davis and Chandos support this flight with a gorgeous cushion of string sound, surpassing any other audio account that can recall. If that sounds like a rave for a new recording of The Lark, it should, but this disc, named for Vaughan Williams’ hit, is a cunning façade for a recording of one of the finest of British violin concertos – that of E J Moeran. It’s criminal that there are only four other versions of this appealing masterpiece in the catalogue – Sammons and Campoli (both with Boult and both in poor sound), Georgiadis on Lyrita and Lydia Mordkovitch’s fine account with Handley, also on Chandos. Little sweeps all before her with the most sensitive and nuanced account to date. Where she stands out… Continue reading…

April 20, 2014
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CD and Other Review

Review: Grainger: Works for large chorus (MSO, Davis)

It’s the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up just one boy on her own … Well, not really. The story of Rose Grainger and her precocious son Percy has more in common with Fifty Shades of Grey than The Brady Bunch. Abandoned by a drunken, syphilitic husband, the domineering mother home-schooled her son, introducing him to a wide range of literature, including the Nordic legends that influenced his music so deeply. By age 16, it appears that Percy had developed a taste for sadomasochism and as he grew
 up his mother did her best to stymie her son’s budding romantic relationships. The suggestion that she was incestuously involved with her son played tragically with her already fragile mental health and
 she jumped to her death out an office block window. It’s no surprise,
then, that Grainger 
remained obsessed
 with his mother for the
 rest of his life. The works recorded here (most for the first time) bear her imprint. Marching Song of Democracy is dedicated to her and celebrates their “adoration” of Walt Whitman, while Thanksgiving Song extols “womankind’s contribution to terrestrial immortality”. Scored for wordless chorus and large orchestra, these works reveal Grainger’s masterly orchestration and questing…

June 19, 2013