Many of the events in this brochure have been and gone. However May 2011 was not a great month for British music. The Hallé gave Beethoven’s Overture: Egmont, Bruch’s inevitable Violin Concerto No.1 (he actually wrote three!) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.5. The Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra also concentrated (hardly surprisingly) on Tchaikovsky. May 5 was a red letter day. After Sibelius’s En Saga and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, Mark Elder and the Hallé performed Elgar’s Enigma Variations. However the only British piece in their subsequent...
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Bantock wrote a number of works inspired by Scotland, the land of his patrimony. Most of these works are of a programmatic nature. Many have a Celtic twilight feel to them. Some are inspired by the redoubtable folk-song collector Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser. These works include, the Seal-Woman- a two act opera, the Celtic Symphony, The Sea Reivers, Cuchullan's Lament, Three Scottish Scenes, Coronach, Macbeth Overture and a number of songs and choral...
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Pam Blevins in Brevard, USA sent me this note: it is well worth publishing here:-If the situation with performances of British music is disappointing (see my recent post on the Halle Proms, JF) this summer season, I am pleased to report a somewhat better climate at the Brevard Music Center tucked away in the mountains of western North Carolina. On opening night Friday, conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Brevard Music Center Orchestra launched the 6-week series with a come-alive performance Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture and a remarkable...
Saturday, June 25, 2011
I was in Manchester a few days ago and visited the Bridgewater Hall. Unfortunately, there was a ‘special’ event on, so I was duly (very politely) ejected. However, the lady on the door did manage to present me with three leaflets: - ‘The Hallé Promenade Concerts June-July 2011’, ‘The Bridgewater Hall International Concert Series 11/12’ and the ‘Summer 2011’ events brochure. Interesting reading? Well, from a general musical perceptive, yes. However, from the point of view of British Music it is very much a washout –with a few notable exceptions....
Thursday, June 23, 2011
There is a danger that listeners may down-rate the Saga Fragment simply because it was not a new work, but a reheated piece ‘dished up’ from Bax’s catalogue of chamber music. In fact, they could make no greater error of judgement. As Brian Wilson writing on MusicWeb International suggests, ‘it sounds anything but cobbled together.’The work was a result of a request by Harriet Cohen for a short ‘concerted’ piece for her forthcoming American tour in 1933. Bax orchestrated the [Piano] Quartet in One Movement (GP255) which had been written...
Monday, June 20, 2011
John Blackwood McEwen is rather like the district of Galloway - an undiscovered country. Both deserve to be much better known. A few brief notes about the composer's life and works are in order. Born in the Border town of Hawick in 1868. Studied at Glasgow University - gaining an M.A. - then at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Ebenezer Prout, Tobias Matthay and Frederick Corder. Held posts as choirmaster and organist in Glasgow and...
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Robert Farnon’s miniature Jumping Bean is a perennial favourite. I guess that it is known by all enthusiasts of light music and is remembered by most music lovers. However, there can be confusion. On a (unnamed) webpage someone has suggested that it was used as the theme tune to ‘Top of the Form’. It wasn’t. That particular favourite was Marching Strings by Marshall Ross. However, Jumping Bean was used by the producers of the radio programmes ‘Journey into Melody’ and ‘Melody Hour. Like so many pieces of light music it is hard to pin down an ‘exact’...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop ‘somewhere in England’ last night when I came across a little gem. Now, I think I have Sir Edward Elgar’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in my collection of miniature scores. However, imagine my delight to find a copy that had been given to Howard Ferguson by a Dutch friend in 1933. It even has the composer's 'stamp' on the front cover. The price of this little gem was a mere £3.50 having been reduced from £7! Apart from a little foxing on the cover it is a good clean editon. So, to celebrate my ‘find’,...
Monday, June 13, 2011
I have always enjoyed the Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion since first hearing it on the Chandos release back in 1993 with Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra. The work was dedicated to the well-respected percussion player Jimmy Blades. Mary Alwyn has written that her husband often consulted Blades ‘on the complexity of writing for these instruments in the modern symphony orchestra.’ It is hardly surprising that the Fanfare employs a battery of percussion including the marimba, the vibraphone and the glockenspiel. The work has been described...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Montague Phillips' Phantasy for Violin & Orchestra was written in 1912. In some ways it is quite hard to imagine that this work was actually played at a Promenade Concert – not because of the quality of the music, which is superb – but simply because of our association of this composer with ‘light music.’ However this work is no lightweight or trivial piece.Sometime in 1906 William Walter Cobbett announced his first Chamber Music Prize in the Musical Times. This called for relatively short pieces of music that reflected the string writing and...
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I came across this article whilst browsing in the 1927 Musical Times. It is worth presenting here as a good account of the Holst Festival in Cheltenham in March 1927.It was a happy thought on the part of Cheltenham music-lovers to arrange a festival performance of the works of its distinguished son, Gustav Holst. Two concerts (with the same programme) were given in Cheltenham Town Hall by the City of Birmingham Orchestra on March 22, and they are...
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Quartet for Strings No.7 in Eb was written in 1916. Obviously this was in the middle of the First World War. It is hardly surprising that this work was subtitled 'Threnody'. This is a song of lamentation.This quartet is written in four movements -three of them being slow. The work opens with a very dark and lugubrious Lento. However there are some moments of warmth in this movement. With increasing complexity it builds up to a climax which resolves it self into a restatement of the opening theme. This is a very satisfying opening movement,...
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Whenever I hear Robert Farnon’s Manhattan Playboy, I tend to think of Bertie Wooster and his ‘American’ adventures -as played by Hugh Laurie and admirably supported by Stephen Fry as Jeeves. Certainly the character depicted is not a bad person or a roué. More likely a man about town who has a little more money and free-time than sense!The timescale would appear to be the ‘thirties’ in spite of the piece having been composed in 1948, although I guess...
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The earliest work that has been recorded in the Walton canon is the beautiful Litany for four-part choir dating from December 1915 when the composer was only 14 years old. There is virtually nothing else in the CD catalogues until the underrated, but highly charged and deliciously romantic Piano Quartet composed in 1921 and duly revised some 50 years later. Whilst Walton was at Oxford he wrote a considerable number of songs, motets and vocal works. Many of these were subsequently discarded. These include the part-song ‘Tell me where is fancy bred’,...
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