The centenary of Tippett’s
birth falls this year (2005). This together
with another NMC CD of Tippett conducting
his second and fourth symphonies are
the first outliers for that celebration.
No doubt the year will be crowded with
Tippett discs. His music was feted during
his lifetime but seems to have let slip
its precarious hold on the repertoire
after his death. Centenary year will
at least put many of his CDs back in
the shops and on our shelves.
I rather hope that
some of the long-disdained works will
put in an appearance. It worked for
Britten so why not Tippett? After all
is there any real reason why we should
not hear A Song of Liberty to
words by Blake from ‘The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell’ and, by the way, the
1930s were a good decade for Blake settings:
William Alwyn’s gargantuan setting of
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell has
been neglected for far too long and
may yet surprise us. The Tippett work,
which is for chorus and orchestra, dates
from 1937. There is also Tippett’s music
for the Socialist ballet The Colliery
written for Dartington in 1934;
the same year he completed the similarly
neglected ballad opera Robin Hood.
The 1930s also gave birth to a cargo
of Lennox Berkeley works including a
superb Cello Concerto, the masterfully
stormy Nocturne for orchestra
(as if Berkeley had taken a shine to
the first two Barber Essays and
Music to a Scene from Shelley)
and the oratorio Job (1934).
These recordings have
been digitally remastered by NMC but
they do not betray any of the usual
signs of excessive scrubbing and synthesis.
In fact the dream-like Fantasy-Sonata
has one point where there are deep
rumbles from the disc. Scuffs and hiccups
are also encountered at the start of
the second 78 from 4:00 on tr. 1. Phyllis
Sellick’s way with the gently singing
way with the Andante links with Finzi.
There is otherwise little that you might
link with the main practitioners of
English pastoralism. Bach, Beethoven
and Handel may pass in deferential parade
through some of the pages but the tight
rhythmic figures that grip the finale
pave the way for the air-borne exuberance
and life-enhancing joy of the Concerto
for Double String Orchestra. This
comes next in the hands of Walter Goehr,
the father of Alexander Goehr. Did Tippett
ever excel his achievement this work,
perhaps in the late Triple Concerto
but he never captured anything like
the popularity secured by the Concerto.
It will keep his name in the repertoire
when everything else has faded. Another
first recording this Goehr set ushered
me into Tippett’s music via a battered
Classics for Pleasure LP reissue from
the late 1960s. The coupling was an
equally distressed 78s transcription
of Rawsthorne’s Symphonic Studies.
Goehr leads his orchestra through an
emotional reading - the vibrato piled
high, wide and almost Hollywood deep
in the Adagio cantabile. In the
finale Goehr dares to have the strings
almost croon when it comes to the big
lyrical statements. Comparing this with
Colin Davis’s BBC TV studio recording
from the 1960s broadcast in monochrome
as part of a Tippett retrospect in December
2004 Davis shows a more typically English
reserve. Goehr’s orchestra is not large,
nor is it perfectly polished but it
is ample to carry the emotional burden.
This work strikes the ideal balance
between seething Stravinskian bustle
and dew-fresh pastoral song. It remains
at all times pellucidly orchestrated
something that was to carry over into
the Corelli Fantasia years later.
Compare this clarity with two other
British works of the 1930s; works I
love but which often revel in a gorgeous
density of texture: Bliss’s Music
for Strings (1935) and Howells’
Concerto for Strings (1938).
Ironically the recording of the String
Quartet No. 2 often sounds as if
it is for a much larger number of players
than four. A major early performance
of the work took place on 21 August
1943. Tippett was able to attend having
just been released from prison. He had
missed the recording sessions for the
Concerto for Double String Orchestra.
At that time he was in Wormwood Scrubs
as a conscientious objector. It was
his friend Britten who supervised. Britten
and Pears had themselves narrowly escaped
imprisonment as ‘conshies’. The bustling
of the Concerto comes out in the Presto
and finale of the quartet, tenderness
in the andante as well as a very European
complexity and a certain coldness in
the two outer movements. The most recent
recording here is of Tippett conducting
his Morley College Choir in Tallis’s
Spem in Alium. He inspires
a majestic performance of a sovereign
work - and was no doubt delighted by
its complexity of lithely interweaving
lines. This is hardly the way to get
to know the Tallis but it makes a fascinating
once in a while experience.
The CD is generously
timed and exhaustively documented in
fascinating detail. This is recommendable
to students of British music during
the 1930s and performance practice in
the 1940s as well as to Tippett fans
everywhere.
Rob Barnett
Phyllis Sellick (piano) (Sonata) 
