Some Gems from Punch, 1903 style.

Musical GossipSir CHARLES STANFORD has purchased a motor-bicycle, which he rides with the soft pedal down. Punch March 18 1903It is announced that Sir HUBERT PARRY has postponed his attempt to swim the Channel until after the Hereford Festival. The eminent composer will be accompanied on his great natatory effort by his trainer Mr. HENRY BIRD, and a tug containing Dr. HANS RICHTER, Mr. J. P. SOUSA, Mr. STEPHEN ADAMS and Herr RICHARD STRAUSS, who...

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Sir Herbert Brewer & Handel's Messiah

There is a delightful story in Sir Herbert Brewer’s Autobiography Choirs and Cloisters which was published in 1931. In December of 1927 the Bristol Choral Society gave their annual performance of Messiah at the Colston Hall, Bristol.  Brewer had the idea of inviting the audience to join in with the Hallelujah Chorus. The idea was received by ‘wiser’ heads with some trepidation. However things turned out well:-“I can only say thank-you. I think...

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Stanford and German in New York, 1907

I found this excellent review of Charles Villiers Stanford's Irish Symphony in Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York 1902–1923.  Little comment needs to be added save to point out that Walter Damrosch was born in Breslau in 1862 and died in New York in 1950. He was a composer of a wide variety of music, however it is in his capacity as conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra that we are concerned here. Rudolph Ganz (1877-1972)...

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20th Century English Recorder Works

Lennox BERKELEY (1903-1989) Sonatina Op.13 (1939)Malcolm ARNOLD (1921-2006) Sonatina Op.41 (1953) Gordon JACOB (1895-1984) Suite for Recorder and String Quartet (1957) Malcolm ARNOLD Solitaire (1956) York BOWEN (1884-1961) Sonata Op.121 (1946) Edmund RUBBRA (1901-1986) Meditation sopra Coeur’s Desoles (1949) Malcolm ARNOLD Fantasy for Recorder & String Quartet, Op.140 (1990) Jill Kemp (recorder)  Aleksander Szram (piano) Brodowski QuartetMusic...

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Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Soliloquy & Prayer from Gloriana.

Gloriana Op.53 was completed by Benjamin Britten during 1952 and the early part of the following year. This was the composer’s eighth opera.  It was commissioned by Covent Garden as a part of the celebrations for the coronation of the present Queen, Elizabeth II and was dedicated to her ‘by gracious permission.’ The libretto was devised by the Anglo-African poet and novelist William Plomer (1903-1973) and is based on the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ author Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex which had been published in 1928. Britten has remarked that...

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Frank Bridge & Cyril Scott Piano Quintets on BMS Label

Frank BRIDGE(1879-1941) Piano Quintet in D minor, H49a (1904-5: rev.1912) Cyril SCOTT (1879-1970) Piano Quintet No.1 (1924) Raphael Terroni (piano) Bingham String Quartet: Steve Bingham (violin) Mark Messenger (violin) Brenda Stewart (viola) Miriam Lowbury (cello)British Music Society BMS442CD The Frank Bridge Piano Quintet H49a is a masterpiece of European chamber music. However, based on the work’s general lack of acceptance amongst chamber...

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Theodore Holland: Ellingham Marshes for Viola and Orchestra.

I am surprised that the recent Dutton Epoch (CDLX 7295) recording of Theodore Holland’s Ellingham Marshes for viola and orchestra does not appear to have received any major reviews: even MusicWeb International has not [yet] published anything about this piece.  The only notice I can find is from on the Music Review International webpage. It notes ‘the first recording of Holland’s c.1940 work, a 16-minute exercise in English pastoral impressionism,...

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John McCabe Choral Music on Naxos

I wish that I had heard the opening Three Marian Carols during the Christmas season, for they are amongst the most beautiful examples of the carol writers art that I have come across in a long time.  These evocative numbers have been collected from a number of the composer’s previously published works and are grouped together for this recording: they cover a span of 48 years of musical composition.  The earliest, ‘Mary laid her child’ dates...

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Harry Farjeon: Idyll for Oboe & Orchestra

The British musical world is full of music that I have never heard. Alas, it is often the case that I probably never will hear much of it. In the depths of winter, on 7 January 1926, a short Idyll for Oboe & Orchestra by the largely forgotten composer Harry Farjeon was performed at Bournemouth. The soloist was Leon Goossens.I quote the composer’s programme note as one of the few references to this work to have survived. The two places...

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Some Rare Victorian British Opera Overtures on SOMM

Julius BENEDICT(1804-1885) The Lily of Killarney (1862) John BARNETT (1802-1890) The Mountain Sylph (1834) Michael William BALFE (1808-1870) The Siege of Rochelle (1835) Le Puits D’Amour (1843) Edward LODER (1813-1865) The Night Dancers (1846) William Vincent WALLACE (1812-1865) Lurline (1860) The Amber Witch (1861) Love’s Triumph, prelude (1864?) George Alexander MACFARREN (1813-1887) She Stoops to Conquer (1864) Arthur Goring THOMAS (1850-1892)...

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The Promenade Concerts 1963 – Novelties

A few days ago I posted a résumé of the works that were given their first performance at the Henry Promenade Concerts during 1913.  Today I briefly consider those performed fifty years later at the 1963 series. In some ways not a lot has changed. There are still works by composers who have disappeared from view as well as works by established composers. Please note that not all these works were premieres: a fair few were simply their first outing at a Prom Concert. Richard Rodney Bennett: A London PastoralLennox Berkeley: Four Ronsard Sonnets...

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