The three composers represented on this compilation have little
in common with each other apart from their nationality and the
fact that they were largely neglected during the latter part
of their lives and after their deaths. Of the three, Parry always
kept a foothold on the repertory because of his choral music
- although much of this substantial body of work remains unrecorded
to this day - but the English Suite was a posthumous
work edited after the composer’s death for performance by his
pupil Emily Daymond and not performed until four years after
his death, in a Prom outing after which it promptly sank without
trace. Some of the ideas in the music date back to Parry’s heyday
in 1894 but Daymond did her mentor no favours when she suggested
that two of the seven movements of the suite could be omitted
if the Suite was thought to be too long, and here the
Caprice movement is indeed not given – as it was
in Boult’s earlier 1971 recording for Lyrita. The work is hardly
over-extended at under twenty minutes, and there would have
been plenty of room for the additional movement. The later recordings
in the catalogue, conducted by Richard Hickox and Adrian Leaper,
also include the work complete and under the circumstances there
seems little to recommend this cut version under Boughton unless
the other works on the disc appeal.
Like Parry’s Suite, Finzi’s Eclogue was not
published or performed until after the composer’s death, and
the title was supplied by his editors. It was originally written
in the 1920s as the slow movement of a piano concerto, but was
revised some twenty years later to the form we now know. The
first recording was made in 1977 under the indefatigable Vernon
Handley and Peter Katin, but since then there have been a number
of others. Martin Jones gives a very cool reading which emphasises
the almost neo-classical style of the writing; one can imagine
the work being played with more heated romantic fervour, but
it nevertheless reveals all its crystalline beauty in this reading
and the playing of the strings is beautifully refined. This
is probably the best track on the disc; but the greater part
of the collection really rests on the shoulders of Frank Bridge.
After his death, Bridge was even more neglected than Parry or
Finzi; indeed, for many years he was only remembered for the
fact that he had supplied the theme for Britten’s Variations,
and there were more recordings of that piece in the catalogues
than of any of Bridge’s own orchestral music. Britten himself
recorded Sir Roger de Coverley with the English Chamber
Orchestra in 1969 in the Snape Maltings, and the larger body
of strings he employed made a more positive impression than
Boughton manages here. It was not until Sir Charles Groves devoted
a whole EMI LP to the orchestral music of Bridge in 1976 that
the revival of the composer’s fortunes may be said to have been
safely launched. Groves could sometimes be a rather stolid and
sober conductor, but at his best he was capable of producing
some superb performances – his recording of Delius’s Koanga
remains unchallenged in the catalogue to this day, and his Bridge
compilation was another of the highlights of his recorded repertoire.
He included Cherry ripe and the Lament in
his compilation, and two years later Boult gave us première
recordings of Rosemary and Sally in our Alley;
but this Nimbus disc was - so far as I can tell - the first
to include recordings of the Canzonetta and the Irish
melody. Indeed this remains the only available recording
of the latter work in its orchestral form, since it was not
even included in Hickox’s otherwise comprehensive survey of
Bridge’s orchestral music for Chandos; the other recordings
in the current catalogue are of the original string quartet
version.
In terms of performances Boughton’s readings of Bridge are fine,
but these are not by and large Bridge’s greatest works; indeed
many of them are transcriptions for string orchestra of pieces
that Bridge originally wrote for smaller forces, and many of
them fall close to the category of ‘light music’ – if any music
by Bridge could be so described. Boughton is just a little slower
than his competitors Boult or Groves - to the advantage of the
heartfelt Lament - but the differences in interpretation
are minimal. The most substantial work here, There is a
willow grows aslant a brook, is however something different
again. This meditation on the death of Ophelia (in Hamlet)
is one of Bridge’s most impassioned later works, and in terms
of length and content it can hardly be categorised as a miniature.
This is the only work on this disc which includes wind instruments,
and it is also clearly the most ‘modern’ composition here; Boughton
gives the music plenty of atmosphere. But there are many other
recordings of this piece, and some of these - not least Hickox
- give the music more substance.
The real attraction for Bridge completists - who will in any
event presumably already possess all the Hickox recordings -
is the orchestral version of the Irish Melody, which
contains yet another arrangement of the (London)derry
Air to set beside those of Grainger and Harty. It is quite
a bit less conventional than the setting by Harty, but decidedly
less so than some of the sometimes bizarrely chromatic versions
in which Grainger indulged himself. Then again, this is not
really a conventionally Irish tune; it fits no known Irish metre,
and its history might lead to some suspicion as to whether it
is really a traditional Irish melody at all. It was first published
in 1855 (without words) and was supplied to George Petrie by
Jane Ross who had arranged it herself for piano and merely stated
that it was “very old”. However later researchers failed to
uncover any trace of its origins, or any Gaelic words; the first
poet to supply lyrics was Percival Graves for an 1882 setting
by Stanford. Apparently Jane Ross, who was a conscientious collector
of folk-songs, may have heard the song in Donegal - where her
brother was a fisherman - rather than Derry itself. There remains
a suspicion that she may actually have written the melody herself
– perhaps more likely than an alternative explanation which
attributes the tune to the fairies. Bridge’s arrangement is
the central section of a piece that is quite substantial in
length and depth; he adds a double-bass part to the original
quartet version. One could imagine the work might be more effective
with more players; the cellos at 1.32 and 2.16 sound rather
thinner than ideal. For Bridge enthusiasts there is no competition
to this recording, which is therefore valuable in its own right.
The recorded sound throughout is natural, and nicely resonant
without being overblown.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
In terms of performances Boughton’s readings are fine.
English String Orchestra/William Boughton