The four previous Alwyn
volumes from Naxos have done well and
here the standard has not slipped.
Not content with generosity
and higher bargain price Naxos offer
us two more pieces of Alwyn not previously
recorded. These make this disc an essential
purchase.
The tangily-titled
overture The Innumerable Dance
derives its name from fragrantly verdant
verse in Blake’s ‘Milton’. You need
to remember that between 1933 and 1938
he wrote a massive work for soli, chorus
and orchestra on Blake’s Marriage
of Heaven and Hell; something we
need to hear. The music of the overture
has some kinship with Delius and Moeran;
you must remember that this is very
early Alwyn. Its fly-away delicacy is
also redolent of Holst. It is most transparently
orchestrated and its triumphant celebration
of Spring places it with two more complex
works: Bridge’s Enter Spring and
John Foulds’ April-England.
Aphrodite in
Aulis is referred to as an Eclogue
inspired by the George Moore novel of
the same name. Moore is now desperately
unfashionable and his writing is pretty
indigestible. In Alwyn’s dreamily Delian
music summer breathes easily; indeed
the whole piece communicates as a single
sweetly arched sigh.
The Oboe Concerto
was premiered by Evelyn Barbirolli
on 12 April 1949 in London. It’s a two
movement work of meditative and dreamily
contented Delian inclination. Its kinship
is with the much later Arnold Oboe Concerto
written for Leon Goossens.
Alwyn put aside these
moods as the years passed and so we
come to a piece that music-lovers who
discovered Alwyn in the LP age will
already know. The Magic Island Prelude
appeared on an early Lyrita (SRCS63
still available in a new coupling as
SRCD229)
with the Third Symphony. Here the manner
we know from the symphonies is apparent
but cross-cut with ‘exotic’ Hispanic
voices from Ravel. If Alwyn’s vision
of the magical island is more grandiose
and less enchantingly delicate than
I would have expected this piece remains
atmospheric.
The dance theme continues
with the Elizabethan Dances which
start with courtly echoes from the Court
of the First Elizabeth to which we return
for the allegro scherzando which
is splashed with the sort of playfulness
to be found in Bridge’s Roger de
Coverley. This contrasts with rapturous
and even exotic dances (trs. 2, 4, 6)
with the psychological reach of a Prokofiev
waltz or the tension-charged dances
from Barber’s Souvenirs. These
dances were preceded in 1946 by a Suite
of Scottish Dances.
The disc ends with
the Festival March premiered
by Sargent conducting the LPO on 21
May 1951. This is an inspired and dignified
but not very personal piece of jobbery
assuming the loose-fitting panoply of
Elgar and Walton in much the same way
as Howard Ferguson did for his 1953
Overture for an Occasion.
Alwyn’s short orchestral
works can be heard on both Chandos (conducted
by Hickox) and Lyrita (Alwyn). These
are full price items and the couplings
differ from the present one so there
is little point in comparison. All I
need say is that the recording is natural
without being distanced and that the
performances evince commitment and a
sympathy for the composer’s varying
styles. Clearly if you have already
launched out on the Naxos route for
the Alwyn symphonies you will need to
have this. In any event Alwynites will
want this for the unique experience
of hearing more than sixteen minutes
of previously unrecorded orchestral
Alwyn.
Rob Barnett
The
William Alwyn Website
Other Naxos Recordings
Alwyn
Symphonies 1&3
Alwyn
Symphonies 2&5
Alwyn
Symphony 4
Alwyn
conducts Alwyn on Lyrita
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/David
Lloyd-Jones 
