Here are
two rare and substantial viola sonatas
by British composers. The works date
from the years of the second British
Musical Renaissance. The sonatas receive
their world premiere recordings. The
Baines and the Harrison are separated
by three of Frank Bridge's easy-on-the-ear
yet far from facile genre pieces. Everything
is played with skill, insight and special
sympathy. John Talbot and Mike Skeet
are to be congratulated on securing
a very agreeable, vivid and intimate
sound.
The Bainton is from
1922 a year or so after the Bax Sonata.
The music has some of the same Celtic
curve, singing intensity and earnest
romantic proclivity as the Bax. It was
written in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne well
before Bainton's departure to Australia
in 1934. It was written for Tertis but
lay unperformed until Bainton and his
daughter Helen premiered it for Australian
radio in 1942. This is one of his most
powerful works and stands aptly alongside
the visionary Third Symphony recorded
in the year of the composer's death
on the Brolga label by the Sydney SO
and Sir Bernard Heinze.
After rather too brief
a pause comes the Allegretto of Frank
Bridge. It was left incomplete on Bridge’s
death and was finished with undeniable
musical rightness by Bridge authority,
Paul Hindmarsh. The music is sweet and
forward-moving. The other two pieces
were published together in 1908 and
are very much in the same romantic mould
we recognise from the solos and genre
miniatures of Glazunov and Fauré.
The Pensiero is suitably pensive
while the Allegro is a work of
romantic exertion which Outram and Michael
Jones deliver with abandon and due weight.
Julius Harrison, a
Worcestershire man (he wrote a Worcestershire
Suite for orchestra) from a musical
family, has had little attention despite
a fine book (Scolar Press) published
during the 1990s . He studied with Bantock
at Birmingham and made his ‘bread and
butter’ working in the opera world of
the 1920s and 1930s. He was close
to Beecham and then became music director
of the Hastings Municipal Orchestra.
The onset of War in 1939 saw the orchestra
disbanded and he then returned to his
home county. There he wrote this Sonata,
a major Mass and an equally epic Requiem
(both for soli, choirs and orchestra)
which were performed at the Three Choirs.
There is also a very fine Housman-inflected
Rhapsody for violin and orchestra called
Bredon Hill. He completed the
present three movement Viola Sonata
in 1945 - the same year as the much
darker nightmare-Sonata by Arthur Benjamin
. It is by no means a simple pastoral
soul's outpouring. There is a macabre
vision to follow in the allegro energico
which suggests a phantasm but nothing
like as grim as the threat in Bridge's
Piano Sonata or Oration yet is
still to be experienced and exorcised.
The horror of passages in Dyson's Quo
Vadis might be a reasonable parallel
to the mood. The middle movement is
an andante e cantabile sempre which
Michael Jones’ notes link with Vaughan
Williams’ Lark Ascending. It
is a sound comparison. This is certainly
reflective and pastoral ecstatic writing
if without the almost erotic charge
Howells' writing in this idiom can bring.
The mood is one of preciously held stillness.
A less louring yet still energetic mood
grips the final allegro vivace.
We will not get a firm
handle on Bainton's achievement until
we have recordings of the Third Symphony
(or a reissue of the ancient Brolga
LP on CD - come on Symposium!). As for
Harrison his major choral works including
the Requiem of Archangels - a
work setting a seal of the tragedy of
the Great War - await recording. This
CD at least opens a valuable door onto
two works whose strengths do not merit
the neglect they have had meted out
to them.
Short playing time
betrays the recordings' origin. They
were first issued on cassette in the
1980s. This CD is extremely valuable,
and not in any mere archival sense,
for here are two resolutely strong and
poetic sonatas receiving their world
premieres. They represent writing and
playing of a very high order bursting
the bounds of conventionality. Listeners
interested in the era should get this
disc and it is certainly a de rigueur
purchase for open-minded violists.
Rob Barnett
Martin Outram (viola) 
