Interesting subtitle
to this disc; I confess I’ve always
thought releasing musicians into the
community to be a very dangerous notion.
I also wonder how those orchestras not
in the Community - all the others
not on this disc I presume - feel about
it.
Anyway, moving swiftly
on from such PC-inspired absurdities,
the actual music contained on this disc,
performed by two chamber orchestras
based mainly in Manchester, is well
worth hearing. The Manchester Camerata’s
contributions were recorded within the
last year, while, slightly oddly, The
Northern Chamber Orchestra’s tracks
hail from 1991. This highlights the
fact that it is a slightly awkward mish-mash
of a programme, the outer parts consisting
of quite recent music by relatively
unknown ‘local’ composers. The central
tracks are by established figures from
the more distant past.
Still, this needn’t
be a problem, and there’s no doubt that
none of the newer pieces is in a particularly
difficult or challenging idiom. The
Partita by Philip Wood is well-written
for string orchestra – everything on
the disc is for strings other than the
little Gossec symphony – and has a breezy
Allegretto and a vigorous dance-like
Allegro con brio, in which the
influence of Bartók can be strongly
felt. The central movement is an impressive
if rather funereal Larghetto.
I found the two pieces
by David Ellis, sometime BBC music producer
and now retired, the most impressive
amongst this first set of tracks. His
Fantasia upon one note is gently
hypnotic, with slowly shifting harmonies
over a single, rhythmically repeated
note in (I believe) the violas. Fantasia
upon a ground is more agitated,
built as it is on the first ground bass
from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas,
over which Dido sings her aria ‘Ah,
Belinda’. My only reservation was that
there seemed the potential for a much
larger work here – Ellis arguably hasn’t
worked his material hard enough. But
this is assured, fluent writing of real
character.
In between the Ellis
pieces come three slighter, if not shorter,
works. Playtime by Richard Howarth,
violinist and director of the Camerata,
is a tiny and very straightforward piece
of musical fun. David Forshaw’s Into
the Light, the ‘title piece’ of
the disc, is more extended, and achieves
a convincing psychological effect through
its three-part structure, moving from
a dark opening through to a lively dance-like
final section. Influences of Bartók
(again), Shostakovich and Britten are
all very much in evidence at the start,
then the troubled music is replaced
by a more optimistic passage of rising
melodies over repeated bass notes. I
admired this passage, not so much the
rather brash concluding passage – representing
the arrival of the light I presume,
illustrating perhaps the old saying
about it being a better thing to travel
hopefully than to arrive. Peter Crossley-Holland’s
Lullaby for violin and strings
is another very tiny piece, quite charming
in its way, and beautifully performed
by Richard Howarth.
The next seven tracks
belong to the Northern Chamber Orchestra,
and they begin with a fascinating piece
by the Spaniard Joaquin Turina. This
is La Oracion del Torero, ‘The
Bullfighter’s Prayer’, originally composed
in 1925 for string quartet. It has transferred
to string orchestra most effectively,
and the players under the talented Nicholas
Ward capture its alternating moods of
vigour and contemplation.
The viola is not well
blessed with solo repertoire, compared
at any rate to the violin and the cello,
so it was good to come across this very
lovely short Elegy by Herbert
Howells, composed in 1917 and played
here with great feeling by the orchestra’s
principal violist Richard Muncey. The
short booklet note comments strangely
that it was composed ‘soon after’ Vaughan
Williams’ Tallis Fantasia. Well
that work was written in 1910 – seven
years later is hardly ‘soon’, and, apart
from a shared contemplative Englishness,
there seems little point in the reference.
Gossec’s D major Symphony
is a harmless enough little Classical
work, with some comically naïve
moments, but also a genuinely attractive
central Andante. Purcell’s great
G minor Chacony is hard to ruin,
but the deafening harpsichord continuo
here comes close to doing so, adequate
though the string playing is. This part
of the programme ends with the only
real ‘lollipop’ on the disc, Massenet’s
swooning Last Sleep of the Virgin,
in a version for cello and strings.
Robert Glenton projects the solo part
with suitable intensity and in some
style.
Back to the Camerata
for the final item, David Ellis’s excellent
Suite Française. This
brief sequence of movements is based
on melodies Ellis found in the books
of ‘Danceries’ by the 16th
century French composer Claude Gervais,
making this a kind of companion piece
to Warlock’s Capriol Suite. Like
Warlock, Ellis dresses up the tunes
with some quite acerbic harmonies, without
ever traducing their essential nature.
Once more, the Camerata give a polished
performance; noteworthy is the splendidly
rich corporate tone in the Pavane,
and the witty, inventive Galliard
makes a fine conclusion to this
unassuming but highly enjoyable disc.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
Richard Howarth (violin solo track 7); Richard
Muncey (solo viola track 10); Robert Glenton (track
15) 
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