This reissue is part of a tribute from Chandos to Richard Hickox,
whose work in the field of British music is so rightly celebrated.
Hickox it was who gave us revivals of Holst’s Cloud
Messenger, never previously (or subsequently) recorded,
and Vaughan Williams’ The Poisoned Kiss, also never
recorded but a work of real comic accomplishment. It is a pity
that he never got round to recording Holst’s The Perfect
Fool, also a work of comic genius; but he did set down this
recording of the brief The Wandering Scholar which was
Holst’s last opera and also a little gem of a piece. It
has been recorded twice before. Steuart Bedford recorded it
for EMI in 1975, and this version has been reissued twice on
CD; there was also a ‘pirate’ recording conducted
by Imogen Holst which was once available on the long-extinct
Intaglio label, which derived from a series of Aldeburgh performances
in the 1960s but which I have not heard.
Comparisons with Bedford’s recording are very much a matter
of swings and roundabouts. In the title role Robert Tear for
Bedford was perhaps a little too knowing, a little too arch
for the part of the simple wandering scholar; but Neill Archer
here doesn’t have the same depth of tone even if he is
better than Tear at delivering the short passages of spoken
dialogue towards the end. As the curtain falls Clifford Bax’s
libretto specifies that he laughs; Tear does this silently,
but Archer lets loose a full-bellied roar of derision. This
is a mistake. The final moments of the opera, as the farmer
takes his errant wife upstairs with a cudgel in his hand and
the clear intention of indulging in a session of wife-beating,
is uncomfortable enough without any attempt to make the situation
comic. This is a case where modern sensibilities have overtaken
the original text; the situation is no longer funny.
As the aforementioned errant wife Ingrid Attrot is more full-bodied
of voice than the cheeky Norma Burrowes on the old Bedford recording,
to the advantage of the music; but her diction is far less clear
than that of Burrowes. “Now, do lie flat!” she sings
to the priest she is hiding under a bale of straw, but without
the text provided in the booklet you would never know it; she
lengthens the vowel sounds in a way that is totally unidiomatic.
As the lecherous priest Donald Maxwell, who has a fine sense
of comic timing, is more personable than was Michael Langdon
for Bedford. Langdon was famous for his black bass roles, such
as Claggart and Hagen; and although he also had a reputation
as a fine comic Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, his voice
did not lend itself naturally to geniality. In the smaller role
of the farmer Alan Opie has more voice and better tone than
Michael Rippon for Bedford, but again Rippon’s diction
is clearer. This is despite a ‘mummerset’ accent
- the opera is supposed to be set in France!. This is however
aided by a rather more immediate recording.
The orchestra under Hickox is superior to the sound of the ECO
under Bedford as recorded for EMI twenty years earlier. You
can hear considerably more of the delicious detail of Holst’s
scoring. The score was edited by Benjamin Britten and Imogen
Holst for its first publication in 1968, and they apparently
made “some small alterations and additions for practical
reasons” (to quote Colin Matthews). In fact that published
score allows for the reduction of the strings to a body of single
players, a procedure which might be in line with Britten’s
practice at Aldeburgh but which is foreign to the Holst idiom
in his later works. Bedford clearly uses that edition - although
with a larger body of strings - but the greater depth of sound
leads me to suspect that Hickox may have reverted to some of
Holst’s original thoughts. The booklet is silent on this
point.
What makes the Bedford recording so valuable, however, is the
coupling in the later mid-priced EMI reissue. Whereas here Hickox
gives us some fairly minor Holst orchestral music, Bedford’s
reissue is coupled with David Atherton’s complete recording
another late Holst opera, At the Boar’s Head, which
is otherwise unobtainable on disc. Hickox’s couplings
are much less enticing. The Suite de ballet is an early
work, but one which Holst revised in 1912; it is light music,
written with a clear eye to commercial success. It does not
plumb any depths even though there is a lovely violin solo in
the Scène de nuit, played with affection here
by Bradley Cresswick.
The Song of the night was written as a companion to the
Invocation for cello and orchestra, but while the Invocation
is a wonderful piece the Song lacks the same memorable
profile. Both these works are available elsewhere; Hickox gives
the best available recording of the Suite de ballet,
but Lesley Hatfield in the Song of the night is evenly
matched with Lorraine McAslan, who gives a fine reading on Lyrita
with David Atherton. This disc is not then an essential acquisition
except for Hickox fans - of whom there are deservedly many.
Nonetheless its reissue is welcome. The booklet, as I have noted,
gives the full text of The Wandering Scholar and comprehensive
notes.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
see also review by Rob
Barnett
Holst review index
*Ingrid Attrot (soprano) (Alison); *Neill Archer (tenor) (Pierre);
*Alan Opie (baritone) (Louis); *Donald Maxwell (bass) (Father Philippe);
+Lesley Hatfield (violin) 