This is a reissue of
a full price Chandos disc (CHAN8741)
long in that company’s lists. While
the record catalogue for Leighton has
burgeoned in recent years - not least
the wonderful Delphian 3CD set of the
piano music (see other
review) - this is the only all-Leighton
orchestral disc. Chandos have one other
Leigthon orchestral piece in their coffers:
Veris Gratia for cello, oboe
and strings - long harnessed to Wallfisch's
recording of the Finzi Cello Concerto
on CHAN8471.
Leighton, a Scottish-born
composer, had the misfortune to be borne
into the Cheltenham generation of composers.
They were slighted by the fashionable
serial tsunami that swept through to
a long-held ascendancy between 1946
and 1980. It was only then that the
walls began to crack and fall. Leighton
was a tonal composer with leanings towards
Bartókian dissonance; although
these came later in his career.
In the Cello Concerto
the rhapsodic flux is decidedly eastern
European specifically Hungarian. The
music keeps recalling Rozsa's Cello
Concerto and Sinfonia Concertante. There
are cross-currents from Walton (listen
to the central scherzo - brilliantly
recorded here). The finale is ushered
in by the unaccompanied soloist in reflective
and melancholy-tinged mood. Leighton
ends this his seventh concertante work
with complete integrity. After a confident
progression towards silence the door
gently closes.
The Third Symphony
is from 1984 and is for tenor and orchestra.
The chosen poems have as their subject
the art of music. The predominant mood
is contemplative or supplicatory. This
contrasts with the central movement.
There the music dances with nervy animalistic
activity evoking the Great God Pan piping
on a reed at the riverside. The symphonic
weight and momentum of the finale is
undeniable. It creates a very successful
and compact synthesis of song-cycle
and symphony. The drama of the last
movement strongly recalls Samuel Barber's
orchestral essays. Once again the work
ends with an audacious progression to
silence rather than crowd-pleasing melodramatics.
The poems set are reproduced
in full in the booklet. They are from
Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici
- For there is a musicke; Elizabeth
Barrett Browning's The Great God
Pan; and Shelley's Music when
soft voices die and verse by the
composer. The notes are in the reliable
but never dull hands of Lewis Foreman.
Blessedly apt timing
that Chandos release this fine and perceptively
performed pairing within a month of
Angela Brownridge's
revelatory performances of the Leighton
piano music. It's just a pity that Veris
Gratia could not have been shoe-horned
on as well; just under an hour minutes
is short commons these days. Strongly
commended.
Rob Barnett
Raphael Wallfisch (cello) 
