MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Crotchet  AmazonUK   AmazonUS

 

George DYSON (1883-1964)
Nebuchadnezzar for tenor, bass-baritone, chorus and orchestra (1934) [47:48]
Woodland Suite for strings and wind (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon ad libitum) (1921) [7:22]
O Praise God in His Holiness for chorus and orchestra (Psalm 150) (1937) [2:12]
Three Songs of Praise for accompanied chorus (string orchestra, with two timpani, two trumpets and three trombones ad libitum) (1935) [9:54]
Confortare (Be Strong and of a good courage) for chorus and orchestra (1953) [1:37]
Mark Padmore (tenor); Neal Davies (bass-baritone); BBC Symphony Chorus; BBC Symphony Orchestra/Richard Hickox 
rec. Watford Colosseum (Town Hall), 18-19 November 2006. DDD. premiere recordings
CHANDOS CHAN10439 [68:57]
Experience Classicsonline


Dyson was very much the darling of the English choral traditionalists yet resisted its cloying excesses. He wrote music with sturdiness and brilliance and had a natural aptitude for the human voice.
 
An RCM student, his professor was Stanford who was so impressed that he dissuaded Dyson from studies at Leipzig. Instead he encouraged him to spend time in Italy which he did and from which period the tone poem Siena (unrecorded) emerged. After Italy he spent time in Vienna and Berlin where Nikisch included Siena in his concert programme. He served in the Great War and survived, though not unmarked by the experience. His Canterbury Pilgrims (Chandos CHAN9531) and other choral works including to a lesser degree Quo Vadis (see end of review for a list of Dyson recordings reviewed on this site) became enduring staples of cathedral and concert hall. By contrast the symphony and the violin concerto had their premieres and then languished; he had been pigeonholed as a choral man related in some inchoate way to the Stanford tradition. In fact his choral works show an imaginative updraft borne in from Continental influences and occasionally from Sibelius.
 
His Nebuchadnezzar is a very substantial piece marked by Walton’s blazingly imaginative Belshazzar’s Feast from only three years previously. It sets words from The Book of Daniel and from Song of the Three Holy Children from The Apocrypha. The fall of the voices, both solo and occasionally choral, carry the Walton stigmata – emphasised by Dyson’s use of words many of which were set by Walton as part of his 1931 masterpiece. However this has not sucked all the originality out of Dyson’s inspiration as we can hear time after time. In the case of this work the sometimes gawky humour of Canterbury Pilgrims is absent. Instead Dyson often captures the Old Testament ferocity of the text avoiding any hint of Victorian fustian or rum-ti-tum miscalculation. There is an aggressive Orff-like edginess to Part II which contrasts with the ruggedly Elgarian power of the step-down finale of Part I. Poetry aplenty abounds in the sea-swell of Part III which also reminded me at 5:58 onwards of Holst’s Choral Symphony of 1925. In the majestic exaltation of Part IV there are moments of familiarity if you know Vaughan Williams’ Benedicite. It’s a splendid work bursting with inspiration - brilliant and majestic. 
 
The little Woodland Suite comprises four movements in a light-hearted, gentle and poetic Coatesian vein. It only succumbs to jauntiness in the finale. The movements are At Evening Bell (Tranquillo); Silken Sails (Allegretto); Moon-Fairy (Andante); Elfin Market (Allegro).
 
The Three Songs of Praise include a suave and smooth Let all the world …, a cherishably lovely Ye that have spent the silent night in which the string writing is of the gentlest and a final Poet’s Hymn which has the buoyancy of the start of At the Tabard Inn.
 
The two coronation anthems have the tradition and the manner down to a tee. Listen to the grandiloquence of O Praise God in His Holiness in which the horns roll over the contours of the choir in golden balance. Confortare is very short and is just slightly distanced from Vaughan Williams in style.
 
The complementary notes are by Lewis Foreman and Freeman Dyson and provide a balance of hard information, intrigue, humanity and fascination. The whole project which is magnificently performed throughout would not have happened without the support of the Sir George Dyson Trust. I look forward to later instalments including Siena.
 
Enthusiasts for the festive yet idiosyncratic mainstream of British choral music need look no further.
 
Rob Barnett
 
Reviews of other Dyson CDs
Choral music: Somm SOMMCD014
Quo Vadis
: Chandos CHAN10061
St Paul's Voyage: Somm SOMMCD234
Symphony: Chandos CHAN10308X, Naxos 8.557720
Violin Concerto: Chandos CHAN9369


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.