Here is a real winner, and particularly welcome coming on the heels of the
splendid compilation in The British Music Collection
(Decca
468 804-2), which also includes Five Distances (played
by Ensemble InterContemporain) together with works for larger chamber ensembles
and orchestras. The Galliards need fear no comparison, and theirs is a cunningly
organised programme of smaller scale pieces by Harrison Birtwistle (b.1934),
a few of which might otherwise never have been recorded. Their generous selection
covers a broad range of instrumentation, influences and structure.
The backbone is two substantial wind quintets, his early Refrains &
Choruses (1957) and the Five Distances (1992). Birtwistle stresses
the differences between the wind quintet instruments as contrasted with the
family of strings. Both are strong, quirky pieces, the first establishing
his individuality in a total serialist context (no mean feat that) and the
other much more recent. Perhaps all six of the difficult and austere Duets
for Storab (two flutes) should not be played straight through? Try the
experiment of interspersing some of them with the three versions of An
Interrupted Endless Melody, which can be given singly or as a set of
three pieces.
Some of this programme was given at a 1999 Prom
reviewed in Seen
& Heard, where you will find some exchanges from a characteristically
frosty radio interview with the composer. The Serpentine Gallery, with an
eye catching exhibition of Brigid Reilly to counterpoint the music, proved
then to be an unsuitable venue for this often strident music, and the difference
tones were really painful!
All is quite different in this CD production, recorded at a school in Reading
where everything is perfect. And Colin Anderson did far better in encouraging
Sir Harrison to expand by visiting his home in Wiltshire. His interview,
and editing of the booklet, are exemplary, and for those who can cope with
the technicalities, there are pertinent and lucid notes by the musicologist
Richard Whitehouse, a founder member of the Seen & Heard launch
team.
Richard Shaw (piano) makes an important contribution to the success of the
programme as a whole. He gives some quieter solos at just the right moments
(one of them composed for Birtwistle's son Adam, who contributes the very
striking cover portrait of his father) and in Linoi with Katherine
Spencer (clarinet), who is pictured on the back cover in a pose which reminds
us how we all used to sit on the floor at school! All the playing is immaculate.
It has been a pleasure to follow the progress of the Galliard Ensemble and
its members live
(e.g.http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2001/June01/KathrynThomas.htm
) and on
CD
& since their PLG days, and this release should really put them on the
contemporary music international map.
Peter Grahame Woolf
for
details
Richard Shaw (piano)
